Dr. Kofron specializes in in vitro tissue engineered models of physiological and pathophysiological conditions. Her PhD work focused on the development novel assays to break down the complex mixture of cues involved in neuronal guidance, and her postdoctoral studies focused on cardiac models developing 3D microtissue models of interstitial and compact fibrosis. Her current work seeks to develop an in vitro screening platform for pro-arrhythmic toxicity testing using human 3D cardiac microtissues.
Dr. Kofron earned her Sc.B. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Brown University. She was an American Association of University Women Predoctoral Fellow, an American Heart Association Founders Affiliate Postdoctoral Fellow, and a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellow.
She has more than 10 years of experience in mentoring student research projects and has taught the biomedical engineering capstone design course since 2015. She redesigned the capstone curriculum with Anubhav Tripathi in 2016 to integrate students from diverse disciplines (BME, STEM and social science disciplines, and RISD students) working directly with clinicians and healthcare professionals to address their engineering design challenges. Examples of collaborations and projects can be found here: https://www.brown.edu/academics/biomedical-engineering/academics/undergraduate-program/capstone/past-projects
She was awarded the Tau Beta Pi Excellence in Teaching Award and Rhode Island Monthly Tech 10 Award for Tech Education, and she mentored a team of Brown undergraduate students that was awarded 1st place in the Biomedical Engineering Coulter College Design and Pitch Competition. She has also served as a mentor and/or judge for Brown Hack Health (http://brownhackhealth.org/) and Design+Health at Alpert Medical School. In almost two decades at Brown as student through faculty, she has built a broad network of local biology, engineering, industry, and clinical collaborators. She was an Adjunct Lecturer of Engineering from 2015-2017, was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology, and Biotechnology in 2017, and has been Lecturer of Engineering since 2017.
