Rachel Rex graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2018 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. As an undergraduate and one-year post-graduation, she worked in the Barman Laboratory, where she developed multimodal, plasmonic nanoprobes for prostate-cancer imaging.
Now, Rachel is a second-year PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, working in the Sohn Lab. Since beginning her PhD, she has been developing a microfluidic platform for rapid, low-cost diagnosis of Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia. She is also researching the inconsistent efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade, a promising form of cancer immunotherapy, in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. Beyond her research, Rachel works to facilitate progress in education by promoting social justice in STEM. She is a member of a graduate student organization called Bias Busters, which aims to address implicit and structural bias in UC Berkeley’s engineering departments. Within this group Rachel helps lead workshops on diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM.