Kramer Lab

The Kramer Group

Students in the Kramer Lab will learn diverse techniques from materials science, cell biology, and chemistry of amino acids, sugars, and polymers. Join the fun! Email Dr. Kramer directly to discuss your interests (jessica.kramer@utah.edu)

Postdoctoral Researchers


Dr. Casia Wardzala
Casia earned her BS in Bioengineering from Oregon State University, Portland, Oregon. She graduated from the Ph. D. program at the University of Utah in 2023. Her current research focuses on sortase-based glycocalyx engineering.


Dr. Rachel Detwiler
Rachel received her BS in biomedical engineering with a premed concentration from the University of Maine. Her previous research experience includes controlled drug delivery through hydrogels and development of an immunoassay diagnostic for intestinal parasites in canines. Rachel graduated from the Ph. D. program at the University of Utah in 2023.


Grad Students


Amanda Wood
Amanda graduated with a BS in bioengineering and a minor in mathematics from the University of Missouri, Columbia in the spring of 2020. Her previous research interests involved the selective labeling of disease-associated cell surface proteins with fluorescently labelled aptamers. She is currently working on understanding how the composition of mucins affects viral viability on everyday surfaces.


Tommy McPartlon
Tommy graduated from SUNY Binghamton with a B.S in biochemistry spring of 2021. His previous research focused on optmizing the membrane insertion of a peptide which selectively inserts at the slightly acidic pH of tumors. His current work is developing new proline-based biomaterials.


Ke Wang
Ke earned his B.A. in Biology from Vassar College in New York. His previous industry experience involves formulation development for macromolecular pharmaceutics and medical device design. His current work is in glycocalyx engineering.


Youngjae Lee
Youngjae received her B.S. in biology with a chemistry minor from University of Utah. Her previous work includes validating analytical assays to extract and detect the different analytes of interest in biological samples, and investigating metabolic pathways of small cell lung cancer cells under arginine deprivation. Currently, her work focuses on mucin-mimicking biomaterial synthesis and exploring specific post-translational modifications.


Tara Buzinski
Tara received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in December 2021. While in school, she minored in biomedical engineering and conducted research on halogen-bonding DNA base pairs. Her research will focus on engineering and characterizing antifreeze glycoproteins.


Lauren Kelly
Lauren graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a B.S. in Quantitative Biosciences and Engineering in spring of 2023. Her previous work was focused on synthesizing fluorescent probes to track reactive oxygen species. Her current research is on tuning the properties of mucus using fusion proteins.

Undergraduate Students


Charlie Osborne
Charlie is currently an undergraduate in the Biomedical Engineering Department, and he is working with Tommy in the lab on exploring synthetic mucin mimetics involving proline.


Celeste Kalapala
Celeste is an undergraduate researcher in the Biomedical Engineering Department, going into her 3rd year of the program. She is working with composition of mucins.


McKenna Coughlin
McKenna is a biomedical undergraduate researcher in her junior year exploring mucin mimetics.


Aaron Kozlowski
Aaron is an undergraduate in his 3rd year of Biomedical Engineering, minoring in Chemistry. He is working with Amanda on researching synthetic mucins.

Former Members


Dr. Zachary Clauss (Graduate Student)


Dr. Zeliha Ates (Postdoctoral Researcher)


Austin Schlirf (Graduate Student)


Nathaniel Wright (Undergraduate Student)


Simranpreet Singh Saini (Undergraduate Student)


Spencer Sawas (Undergraduate Student)


Carson Rowser (Undergraduate Student)


Sophia Blankevoort (Undergraduate Student)


Clara Coffey (Undergraduate Student)


Alex Wallberg (Undergraduate Student)


Dr. Victoria Kohout (Postdoctoral Researcher)


Dr. Anna Deleray (Graduate Student)