Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering offers the resources of a major technological university and a location in the heart of cosmopolitan Atlanta. The College is the largest of the Institute’s six colleges, enrolling more than 60 percent of the students at Georgia Tech and about half of all tenured and tenure track faculty at the Institute. U.S. News and World Report ranks the College in the top four of engineering programs in the country. The College offers more than 50 different degree programs at the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels through its main Atlanta campus and satellite campuses around the world. As a leader in engineering education, the College graduates the largest number of women and minority engineers in the country. Visit www.coe.gatech.edu to learn more. 

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Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program Concept Award, 2009

Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program Concept Award

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, 2005

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship

Material Design for Lymph Node Drug Delivery

Analyzing Mechanisms of Metastatic Cancer Cell Adhesive Phenotype Leveraging Preparative Adhesion Chromatography Microfluidic

Augmenting the synergies of chemotherapy and immunotherapy through drug delivery

Fluorometric Quantification of Single-Cell Velocities to Investigate Cancer Metastasis

Dr. Thomas joined Georgia Tech in November 2011 as an Assistant Professor. Prior to this appointment, she was a Whitaker postdoctoral scholar at École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (one of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology) developing nanomaterials for cancer immunotherapy and studying the role of lymphatic transport in immunity. Dr. Thomas received her Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University as a NSF Graduate Research Fellow where she studied the role of fluid flow in regulating blood-borne metastasis and identified novel biomarkers for the detection of metastatic colon cancers.

Dr. Thomas’s research focuses on the role of biological transport phenomena in physiological and pathophysiological processes. Her laboratory specializes in incorporating mechanics with cell engineering, biochemistry, biomaterials, and immunology in order to 1) elucidate the role mechanical forces play in regulating seemingly unrelated aspects of tumor progression such as metastasis and immune suppression as well as 2) develop novel immunotherapeutics to treat cancer.

Cancer progression is tightly linked to the ability of malignant cells to exploit the immune system to promote survival. Insight into immune function can therefore be gained from understanding how tumors exploit immunity. Conversely, this interplay makes the concept of harnessing the immune system to combat cancer an intriguing approach. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we aim to develop a novel systems-oriented framework to quantitatively analyze immune function in cancer. This multifaceted methodology to study tumor immunity will not only contribute to fundamental questions regarding how to harness immune response, but will also pave the way for novel engineering approaches to treat cancer such as with vaccines and cell- or molecular-based therapies.

Drug Development and Delivery

Cancer Biology

Biomaterials

Drug Design

Thomas Lab

Associate Professor, Associate Director for Integrated Research Center, Mechanical Engineering

"Allow ME to Introduce..." is a series of videos introducing the faculty of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

For more information on Dr. Thomas, go to:
http://thomas.gatech.edu/

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