My primary research interest is using biomaterials, drug delivery, and microfluidic techniques to develop maternal and prenatal treatments and non-invasive diagnostics.
Ph.D. Thesis: âInvestigating molecular interactions of the placenta for prenatal treatment and testingâ
Advisors: Prof. Anita Shukla and Prof. Anubhav Tripathi, Center for Biomedical Engineering, Brown University
The focus of my Ph.D. research is developing methods to better understand the maternal-fetal interface and enhance non-invasive prenatal testing. Placental trophoblast cells have great potential to provide information about pregnancy complications both fundamentally and clinically during pregnancy. I have developed a placental lipid bilayer model to investigate small molecule and environmental toxin interactions. Using this placental mimetic biomaterial, I aim to screen new therapies and potential hazardous material to inform risk to a developing fetus. Additionally, we have investigated methods for enrichment of placental trophoblast cells in clinical samples to provide the entire fetal genome non-invasively. Our enrichment method has led to a 700% purity increase of placental trophoblast cells within heterogenous cervical samples, which has further led to successful isolation of single fetal trophoblast cells using differential cell settling and automated cell picking.
As a National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellow, I had the opportunity to develop my research project and choose a Ph.D. research area that I am passionate about. Within my Ph.D. and future research, I seek to fulfil an unmet need for chemical and biomedical engineering techniques towards advancing prenatal and womenâs health. As a future faculty member, I aim to develop biomaterials to investigate trophoblast implantation mechanisms for informing treatment of maternal-fetal health complications, such as preeclampsia and infertility. I seek to identify fetal- originated material from non-invasive clinical samples, such as blood, saliva, and cervical samples, for improved prenatal diagnostics. Finally, I aim to develop an improved nutrient transport system for preterm birth.
Teaching Interests:
As an undergraduate student, I was often focused on the answer, whether it be the answer to my problem set, test question, or lab experiment. What I have realized during my more senior years and graduate studies is that being able to ask well thought questions is arguably more valuable and leads to the development of critical thinking skills. I aim to bring this philosophy to my teaching and mentoring by increasing the focus on having students ask questions. I have had valuable experience within project focused classrooms and believe that this is an excellent way to allow students to question.
I have previous experience teaching middle and high school students during summer programs at my undergraduate university. I reorganized the biomedical summer program to allow for team innovation development. As a graduate student, I have been a teaching assistant for four semesters for core courses including Transport and Biotransport Processes and Biomedical Engineering Design and Innovation. I have also mentored six undergraduate researchers; many have presented at national conferences and received honors such as the NSF graduate research fellowship. I am most proud to see my undergraduate students become independent in the lab and confidently present their work.
With degrees in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering, I am prepared to teach core courses including Chemical Engineering Fundamentals, Transport Phenomena, Fluid Mechanics, and Unit Operations Labs. I am also passionate about developing and teaching elective courses including Nano- and bio- engineering, Biomaterials, and Biomedical imaging and diagnostics for chemical engineers.
Selected Publications:
Bailey-Hytholt, C.M., Sayeed, S., Kraus, M., Joseph, R., Shukla, A., Tripathi, A., A Rapid Method for Label-free Enrichment of Rare Trophoblast Cells from Cervical Samples, in review.
Bailey, C.M., Tripathi, A., Shukla, A., Effects of Flow and Bulk Vesicle Concentration on Supported Lipid Bilayer Formation, Langmuir, 33(43), 11986-11997, 2017.
Bailey, C.M., Nagarajan, R., Camesano, T. A., Designing polymer micelles of controlled size, stability and functionality for siRNA delivery, Control of Amphiphile Self-Assembling at the Molecular Level: Supra-Molecular Assemblies with Tuned Physicochemical Properties for Delivery Applications, pp. 35-70, American Chemical Society, 2017. Featured figure on book cover.
Bailey, C.M., Kamaloo, E., Waterman, K. L., Wang, K. F., Nagarajan, R., Camesano, T. A. Size dependence of gold nanoparticle interactions with a supported lipid bilayer: A QCM-D study. Biophysical chemistry, 203, 51-61, 2015.