Mariana Cabatu will receive a B.A. in both Medicine, Health, & Society and Spanish in May 2022 from Vanderbilt University. She previously worked at Stanford University, looking at heart regeneration in neonatal rat models, as well as the encapsulation of cyanobacteria into hydrogel beads.
Cabatu joined the Woodard Lab in January of 2021 to further pursue her interest in regenerative medicine. Within the Woodard Lab, she refined her skills with animal surgical models, and performed a variety of procedures including unilateral nephrectomies, ischemia reperfusion, and tail vein injections. Aside from this, Cabatu designed her own surgical technique revolving around induced pluripotent stem cell-derived kidney organoid implantations. She also has experience in tissue culture technique, as well as histopathology including harvest, fixation, embedding, and staining of tissue samples.