Dr. Abigail Koppes,
Principal Investigator

Brent Buchinger

Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, characterized by progressive losses in motor control and cognitive functioning. While recent work has hinted at a gut origin, research elucidating the mechanisms for this pathological pathway is lacking. Brent’s work aims to develop a novel microphysiological system mimicking the gut-brain axis with the goal of improving platforms for studying and understanding Parkinson’s disease.

Brent joined ABNEL in the summer of 2022 as a Chemical Engineering PhD student. Prior to his graduate studies at Northeastern University, Brent worked as an analytical chemist at Eurofins Food Integrity & Innovation. He obtained his BS in Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in December of 2019. At his undergraduate institution, Brent’s research focused on catalysis. However, his passions switched to biomedical engineering after researching chondrogenic differentiation at Case Western Reserve University in the summer of 2018.

B.S. Chemical Engineering
University of Wisconsin–Madison ’19
Madison, WI

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Dr. Koppes Invited to Give Keynote at 7th TERMIS World Congress

Dr. Koppes Invited to Give Keynote at 7th TERMIS World Congress

The Principal Investigator of ABNEL, Dr. Abigail Koppes, will be presenting a keynote during this year's TERMIS World Congress. TERMIS is the "Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society". As the name suggests, researchers from around the globe...

Undergraduate Researchers Win Big with PEAK Awards

Undergraduate Researchers Win Big with PEAK Awards

The ABNEL lab could not be prouder of our outstanding group of undergraduate researchers! We have three PEAK award winners: Christina Aniolek (top left) won the Base Camp award, Iris Chang (bottom left) won the Ascent award, and Stephen Landry (right) also won the...