Sharick announced as a PPSP 2020 cohort

Congratulations to Joseph Sharick who was recently announced as a 2020 cohort of the President’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program (PPSP). PPSP is a two-year award. Joe is currently a postdoctoral researcher at The Ohio State University, co-mentored by Dr. Jennifer Leight in the Biomedical Engineering Department and Dr. Larry Kirschner, a member of the Molecular Biology and Cancer Genetics Program at the OSU Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The President’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program, supported by the Office of the President, was launched in January 2018 to recognize outstanding young researchers at the university and aid in the recruitment of highly qualified postdoctoral trainees who will become leaders in their fields.

Sharick received his BSE in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University and his MS and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. He is primarily interested in engineering new in vitro and in vivo models of cancer to accelerate the development of new cancer drugs and to tailor treatment plans for individual patients. His PhD thesis work focused on the development of optical metabolic imaging, a novel method for detecting lethal drug-resistant subpopulations of cells hidden within a patient’s tumor. By collaborating across disciplines with surgeons, oncologists, and pathologists, he applied this technique as a tool to predict how individual pancreatic cancer patients would respond to treatment after surgery. Joe’s research was supported by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the NSF under the direction of Dr. Melissa Skala

When choosing between postdoc opportunities, Sharick made it a priority to join a biomedical engineering department that worked hand-in-hand with a renowned cancer center, and found a thriving connection between these groups thanks in part to the OSU Cancer Engineering Program. He was also impressed by the focus placed on professional development for postdocs by the OSU Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. He is now working on developing new biomaterials functionalized with fluorescent biosensors, and using them to study how thyroid cancer cells become metastatic. Joe plans to then translate this biomaterial as a predictive technology in the clinic to determine the metastatic potential of individual patient tumors.