Lauren graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a B.S. in Physics. During her undergraduate research she got hooked on using microscopes to visualize biology. After graduation she spent a year working as an IRTA Fellow at the National Institutes of Health. Lauren is currently a PhD student in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania where she studies miniaturized organs that grow in a dish and tries to figure out what rules govern their appearance. While at Penn she participated in the Interfaces program, which trains researchers to translate basic imaging research by immersing students in the first two years of medical school. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, baking, gardening, and spoiling her dog.