Bio

Omolola (Lola) Eniola-Adefeso is a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Macromolecular Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, where she earned a BSE in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (1999). A co-founder and chief scientific officer of Asalyxa Bio, she is interested in the interactions between blood leukocytes and endothelial cells in vessel lumen lining, and how they change during inflammation response. After losing her father to heart disease, Dr. Eniola-Adefso began to research new treatments for it. Her research looks to design biocompatible functional particles for targeted drug delivery, using knowledge of the cellular inflammatory response and blood flow dynamics to design bio-functionalized particles for targeted drug delivery and imaging.

Dr. Eniola-Adefeso holds an MSE (2000) and a PhD (2004), both in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, from the University of Pennsylvania. After completing her graduate studies, Eniola-Adefso worked in the Baylor College of Medicine as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow, afterwhich she joined the faculty of University of Michigan in 2006. In 2013, Dr. Eniola-Adefeso was named a Miller Faculty Scholar at the University of Michigan and now also serves as the Vice Chair for Graduate Education. Her most recent awards include the 2019 University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor and the 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Faculty Spirit Award from the University of Michigan, where she is a champion for women and underrepresented minority students. 

Dr. Eniola-Adefeso has established a mentoring scheme and served as graduate chair, recruiting the most diverse cohort of students in the department's history. She encouraged undergraduate students to develop experiments for K-12 teachers to use in their classrooms. Dr. Eniola-Adefso has been involved in the College of Engineering NextProf program, which brings women and minority students to campus to experience academic life. In 2021, Dr. Eniola-Adefso and BME colleagues from many US institutions called out racial funding disparity by the National Institutes of Health garnering support for these larger institutional DEI changes from both academic and non-academic communities.

Adapted from Wikipedia

Selected Publications

Onyskiw, P. and O. Eniola-Adefeso. (2013) “Effect of PEGylation on Ligand-Based Targeting of Drug Carriers to the Vascular Wall in Blood Flow.” Langmuir. 2013. 29(35):11127-34.

Thompson, A.J., E.M. Mastria, O. Eniola-Adefeso (2013) “The Margination Propensity of Ellipsoidal Micro/Nanoparticles to the Endothelium in Human Blood Flow.” Biomaterials. 2013. 34(23):5863-71.

Huang, R.B., A.L. Gonzalez, and O. Eniola-Adefeso. (2013) “Laminar Shear Stress Elicit Distinct Endothelial Cell E-Selectin Expression Pattern via TNFα and IL-1β Activation.” Biotechnology & Bioengineering. 2013. 110(3): 999-1003.

Namdee, K., A.J. Thompson, P. Charoenphol and O. Eniola-Adefeso. (2013) “Margination propensity of vascular-targeted spheres from blood flow in a microfluidic model of human microvessels.” Langmuir. 2013. 29(8): 2530-2535.

Charoenphol, P., P. Onyskiw and O. Eniola-Adefeso. (2012) “Particle-Cell Dynamics in Human Blood Flow: Implications for Vascular-Targeted Drug Delivery.” Journal of Biomechanics. 2012. 45(16):2822-2828.

Heslinga, M.J., T.M. Porter and O. Eniola-Adefeso. Design of nanovectors for therapy and imaging of cardiovascular diseases. Methodists: Debakey Cardiovascular Journal. 2012. 8(1): 13-17.

Huang, R.B. and O. Eniola-Adefeso. “Shear stress modulation of IL-1β-induced E-selectin expression in human endothelial cells.” PLoS One. 2012. 7(2): e31874.
Charoenphol, P., S. Mocherla, D. Dubois, K. Namdee and O. Eniola-Adefeso. “Targeting therapeutics to the vascular wall in atherosclerosis – Carrier size matters.” Atherosclerosis. 2011. 217(2): 364-70.

At MIT

The People who get to do the Science determine what Science gets done, MLK Scholar Virtual Seminar, 21 April 2022