Research Overview
Post-Doctoral
In the Kaplan Lab at Tufts University, Mariah leads research on silk fibroin–based biomaterials for drug delivery, sensing, and tissue engineering. Her postdoctoral work focuses on developing tunable silk hydrogels that stiffen over time to model fibrosis, designing hybrid lipid–silk delivery systems, and exploring mechanotransduction disease. She also mentors undergraduate and graduate trainees and manages multiple interdisciplinary collaborations within academia and government.
Undergraduate
Mariah began her research career in 2015 at the University of New Hampshire under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Halpern. Her work focused on electrochemical sensing platforms for biomedical and environmental applications. During this time, she published two first-author papers and served as the laboratory manager, playing a key role in establishing and organizing the lab’s research operations.
Doctoral
Mariah completed her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University under the mentorship of Dr. Kathryn Whitehead (2018–2024). Supported by the NSF GRFP and NIH F31 fellowships, she investigated how lipid nanoparticle chemistry and physiological diversity, particularly sex and age, affect delivery outcomes. Her work encompassed the synthesis of novel delivery materials, comparative studies across murine models, and collaborations on more than 20 projects spanning nanoparticle design and therapeutic applications.
Engineering Education
In 2018, Mariah initiated an engineering education research project focused on identifying effective mentoring practices for neurodivergent undergraduate researchers. The project, originally developed in collaboration with Dr. Jeffrey Halpern at the University of New Hampshire, has since continued under his leadership, with Mariah now serving as a Co-Principal Investigator.