Cornell University

PhD Candidate

About

Tibra Wheeler is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in Biomedical Engineering with a concentration in orthopedics, biomaterials, and drug delivery at Cornell University. Tibra’s research focuses on determining the role of the immune response in osteoarthritis (OA) and applying this knowledge to create immunomodulatory hydrogels to deliver therapeutic agents to the knee joint for the treatment of OA. Tibra is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, a Cornell Sloan/Colman Scholar, and a Cornell Dean Scholar. Prior to Cornell, Tibra received her Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering, Magna Cum Laude, and Leadership Distinction in Research, with a minor in Mathematics from the University of South Carolina. Outside of research, she has been heavily involved in giving back to underrepresented minority groups through her mentoring work in various offices across Cornell’s campus working with high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Tibra hopes to continue her work to take leaps and bounds towards changing the status quo and changing what the world “thinks” an engineer should “look” like.