For three years in a row, a faculty member from the University of Notre Dame’s College of Engineering has won the prestigious CMBE Rising Star Award given by the Biomedical Engineering Society’s (BMES) Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group (CMBE-SIG).
CMBE-SIG recognizes exceptional junior principal investigators for their high-impact, innovative research through this annual award. With the goal of advancing human and veterinary medicine, CMBE unites researchers to study how physical forces shape biology.
Meenal Datta
Jane Schoelch DeFlorio Collegiate Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
2026 CMBE Rising Star Award
Datta’s TIME Lab (Tumor Immune Microenvironment and Mechanics Lab) uses engineering approaches to decipher the atypical tumor microenvironment that drives disease progression and treatment resistance in incurable cancers, such as glioblastoma. By understanding and overcoming the biological, chemical, electrical, and mechanical abnormalities found in solid tumors, the TIME lab is discovering new therapeutic approaches. Datta also researches cancer in the microgravity environment of space to benefit patients on earth; that work was featured in an episode of the Notre Dame video series “What Would You Fight For?” that aired Oct. 16, 2025. She also received the 2025 BMES Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award, the society’s award for early-career researchers.
Yichun Wang
Keating-Crawford Collegiate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
2025 CMBE Rising Star Award
Wang’s research is dedicated to developing nanomaterials-enabled therapies and diagnostics that address urgent challenges in human health. She and members of the Wang Lab advance the fundamental understanding of how materials interact with biomolecules and apply these insights to drug delivery for cancer and neurodegenerative disease, as well as biosensors for opioid detection and surveillance, driving biomedical innovations.
Donny Hanjaya-Putra
Associate Professor, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
2024 CMBE Rising Star Award
Hanjaya-Putra leads a research group that works at the interface of engineering and medicine, with a goal of making stem cell and molecular therapies an effective method to model and treat various diseases. His group focuses on projects that emphasize fundamental principles of engineering and stem cell biology, while also pointing the way to translational science. Applications include cardiovascular and lymphatic disorders, as well as the delivery of therapeutics for wound healing and cancers.
All three Rising Star awardees are faculty affiliates of Notre Dame Engineering’s Bioengineering Graduate Program. Notre Dame faculty Jeremiah Zartman, associate professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Pinar Zorlutuna, Roth-Gibson Professor of Bioengineering, received the CMBE Rising Star Award in 2018 and 2016 respectively.
—Mary Hendriksen, Notre Dame Engineering