Building Cancer Models with Creative Collaborators

Jennifer Munson shares how teamwork and collaboration have fostered her research at the intersection of creativity and clinical discovery.

Written byDeanna MacNeil, PhD
| 1 min read
TS
Register for free to listen to this article
Listen with Speechify
0:00
1:00
Share

TS

Jennifer Munson is an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech. Her overarching research goal is to find new therapeutic targets in the tumor microenvironment by examining cancer from an onco-engineering perspective. Munson’s work combines fluid mechanics, neuroengineering, tissue engineering, and translational cancer research. She creates personalized models of brain and breast cancer with patient-derived cells to examine the roles of interstitial fluid flow and cellular microenvironment components in cancer progression and treatment. In this episode, Deanna MacNeil from The Scientist's Creative Services Team spoke to Jennifer Munson about how collaboration drives her research at the intersection of creativity and clinical discovery.

Science Philosophy in a Flash is a series of mini podcasts produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. With a focus on the people behind the science, this podcast highlights researchers’ unique outlook on what motivates their pursuit of science and what it means to be a scientist.

To learn more, please see “Stem Cell Engineering for Tissue Regeneration

Jennifer


Jennifer Munson, PhD
Associate Professor
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute
Virginia Tech

Related Topics

Meet the Author

  • Deanna MacNeil, PhD headshot

    Deanna earned their PhD from McGill University in 2020, studying the cellular biology of aging and cancer. In addition to a passion for telomere research, Deanna has a multidisciplinary academic background in biochemistry and a professional background in medical writing, specializing in instructional design and gamification for scientific knowledge translation. They first joined The Scientist's Creative Services team part time as an intern and then full time as an assistant science editor. Deanna is currently an associate science editor, applying their science communication enthusiasm and SEO skillset across a range of written and multimedia pieces, including supervising content creation and editing of The Scientist's Brush Up Summaries.

    View Full Profile
Share
You might also be interested in...
Loading Next Article...
You might also be interested in...
Loading Next Article...
Image of a woman with her hands across her stomach. She has a look of discomfort on her face. There is a blown up image of her stomach next to her and it has colorful butterflies and gut bacteria all swarming within the gut.
November 2025, Issue 1

Why Do We Feel Butterflies in the Stomach?

These fluttering sensations are the brain’s reaction to certain emotions, which can be amplified or soothed by the gut’s own “bugs".

View this Issue
An image of a DNA sequencing spectrum with a radial blur filter applied.

A Comprehensive Guide to Next-Generation Sequencing

Integra Logo
Golden geometric pattern on a blue background, symbolizing the precision, consistency, and technique essential to effective pipetting.

Best Practices for Precise Pipetting

Integra Logo
Olga Anczukow and Ryan Englander discuss how transcriptome splicing affects immune system function in lung cancer.

Long-Read RNA Sequencing Reveals a Regulatory Role for Splicing in Immunotherapy Responses

Pacific Biosciences logo
Research Roundtable: The Evolving World of Spatial Biology

Research Roundtable: The Evolving World of Spatial Biology

Products

Labvantage Logo

LabVantage Solutions Awarded $22.3 Million U.S Customs and Border Protection Contract to Deliver Next-Generation Forensic LIMS

The Scientist Placeholder Image

Evosep Unveils Open Innovation Initiative to Expand Standardization in Proteomics

OGT logo

OGT expands MRD detection capabilities with new SureSeq Myeloid MRD Plus NGS Panel