Sydney Floryanzia

Sydney Floryanzia is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington where she uses primary cell-loaded microfluidic devices to investigate interactions between nanoparticles and the blood-brain barrier and identify therapeutic targets for brain diseases. As a chemical engineer by training, she is especially interested in the relationships between vascular dysfunction and pathological changes in the brain microenvironment - which can introduce new therapeutic targets and additional barriers to drug delivery. She also completed a minor in tissue engineering which allowed her to gain skills focused on developing physiologically accurate in vitro and ex vivo systems to study neurovascular pathogenesis and drug transport to and within the brain. Sydney is also an HHMI Gilliam Fellow, NSF GRFP fellow, GEM Consortium Fellow (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory), ARCS Foundation Scholar, and an award-winning Science Communicator focused on increasing opportunity and access to STEM amongst underrepresented groups.