Chemical engineering professor Terri Camesano has been chosen for WPI’s Chairman’s Exemplary Faculty Prize for 2014.
Her tiny research subjects—bacteria that can adhere to and cause big problems in the human body—show that perseverance, no matter how seemingly insignificant, can have major effects.
Camesano’s own perseverance, meanwhile, has helped her earn prestigious awards before—a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, awards from the National Institutes of Health, and awards from the U.S. Army.
BIOFILM FOCUS
For over 10 years now, Camesano’s been studying bacteria, specifically, how they adhere themselves—by banding together and forming colonies, or biofilms, that aren’t eradicated by antibiotics. How they adhere, biochemical mechanisms used to do so, and ways this colonization can be prevented are her areas of focus.