Postdoctoral Research Associate / CDA-2 Awardee
University of Maryland / Baltimore VA
College Park, Maryland, United States
Dr. Robert "Smitty" Oakes, PhD holds a joint appointment as a Research Health Scientist at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA Maryland Health Care System) and as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Jewell Research Lab at the University of Maryland. His research is funded through a VA Career Development Award (CDA-2), which supports his focus on nanotechnology and therapeutics for autoimmune disease. Dr. Oakes is mentored for his CDA-2 by Dr. Christopher M. Jewell, who is a Research Biologist with the VA Biomedical Laboratory R&D Service and the Minta Martin Professor of Engineering in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland. Prior to joining the Jewell Lab, Dr. Oakes completed the first stage of his postdoctoral training at the University of Michigan under the guidance of Dr. Lonnie D. Shea and Dr. Jacqueline S. Jeruss, where he developed an implantable sentinel and diagnostic signature for cancer metastasis. He received his PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Utah – where he concentrated on brain implants in the lab of Dr. Patrick A. Tresco – and graduated from Lenoir-Rhyne University with a BS in Physics and a BA in Theology. Dr. Oakes has authored publications on biomaterials and immune engineering, including lead-author publications in ACS Nano, Cancer Research, Biomaterials, and Nature Reviews Bioengineering. A full list of publications can be found on Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JSbS8u0AAAAJ) and ORCiD (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3783-6488).
Targeting innate immune pathways to instruct therapeutic immune tolerance
Friday, October 13, 2023
4:00 PM – 4:15 PM PDT