Leila grew up in Montclair, New Jersey where she played ice hockey and interned for the sea lion department at the Turtle Back Zoo. Leila, however still can't balance a spinning ball on her nose, while swimming.

 

She is an undergraduate at UNH majoring in Biochemistry and intending on a minor in Chemistry. She joined the Tsavalas lab super recently in 2024 and her work so far is focused on being super cool! Beyond that, she will be working on functionalizing polymer particles such that they can be dispersed in a bio-derived hydrogel and on trigger have their interface crosslinked to the gel. This we hypothesize will lead to a greater range of viscoelastic properties than that of the hydrogel itself. The key is to make the interfacial crosslinking stimuli responsive on demand and potentially also to allow for an orthogonal stimuli to initiate degradation, also on demand.