Eileen Sun is a Biomedical Engineering student with a Tissue Engineering track. Her influential undergraduate research experiences have motivated her to pursue a career in research and academia. She has conducted research on coral genetics in Dr. Andrew Baker’s laboratory (at Columbia University’s CERC); spatial dependence of the fibronectin 7-10 domain in Dr. Michael P. Sheetz’s laboratory (at Columbia’s Department of Biological Sciences); anisotropic diffusion of supported lipid bilayers on nanopatterned substrates in Dr. Lance Kam’s laboratory (at Columbia BME); and targeted gene delivery of biodegradable nanoparticles to MDA breast cancer cells in Dr. Robert Langer’s laboratory (at MIT ChemE/BME). Applying her engineering training to the integrative discipline of virology, she intends to conduct research on how modulations in membrane parameters—stochiometric clustering, spatial distance, and receptor peptide sequence/motifs—confer differential susceptibility of the targeted cell to non-enveloped virus entry. In fall 2008, she began her Ph.D. studies at Harvard’s Program in Virology.