Kathy Barron graduated from Virginia Tech this past spring where she double majored in Biochemistry and Spanish. During her undergrad, she was very involved in her biochemistry department, working as a teaching assistant, a lab assistant for the upper level biochemistry labs, and also as a tutor in both the biochemistry and Spanish department. In addition, she was a research assistant in a microfluidics lab where she was trained to fabricate microfluidic PDMS devices using multilayer soft lithography, as well as how to run microfluidic oscillatory washing based ChIP-seq for genome-wide analysis of histone modification using as few as 100 cells. This summer at UMBC, she is working in the laboratory of Prof. Jennie Leach and Prof. Erin Lavik on a project to develop a method to create a 3D tissue scaffold of the retina using PEG-based hydrogels.

Kathy also participated in many activities outside of the academic realm. In particular, she is passionate about volunteer work. She volunteered weekly at a local elementary school where she taught Spanish lessons. In addition, she enjoyed going to Special Olympics Bowling every Thursday night, where she helped to foster an inclusive environment to help people with disabilities gain confidence in their physical and communicative abilities. In her free time she loves to be outdoors running, swimming, and hiking with friends.