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 Wins R21 Trailblazer Award!

Congratulations to Dr. Abby Koppes and Dr. Ryan Koppes for winning an NIH Trailblazer Research Grant for early career PIs for their project developing a body-chip for a humanized gut-enteric axis (hGEA). More information can be found here!

BMES 2017!

Six members of ABNEL presented at the annual Biomedical Engineering Society conference in Phoenix, Arizona! Congrats to Daniel Ventre, Sanjin Hosic, Tess Torregrosa, David Diaz, Minhal Ahmed, and Marissa Puzan for their successful presentations. Check out some photos of the group at BMES and their trip to the Grand Canyon here!