Lab Members

Mariana Romero-Gonzalez, PhD Candidate, PharmSci Department (she/her)

Bhanuz Dechayont, PhD Candidate, PharmSci Department (he/him)

Nishant Sandeep Shah, PhD Candidate, PharmSci Department (he/him)

Bio: 

Mariana currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan. She obtained an MSc. Major in Pharmacy from Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, a BSc. Major in Biopharmaceutical Chemistry from Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi and a BA. in Management from City University of Seattle. She has had experience in the clinical setting as a lab analyst. She has worked on different research projects in several international labs. And she has acquired experience in academia through teaching college and high school science courses. She is passionate about being of service to humanity and enjoys learning and challenging herself continuously, which is why she finds her field of study to be highly rewarding. Through her research, she seeks to make an impact on the improvement of the health of people.

Bio: 

Nuz grew up in a small town in Thailand’s Samut Songkhram Province, near the sea. He received bachelor's degree and master's degree in Applied Thai Traditional Medicine at Thammasat University, Thailand. Since receiving his MS, he have studied a MS in Integrated Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Michigan. Following his education, Nuz is a PhD student at the University of Michigan majoring in Pharmaceutical Sciences. During the course, he became interested in the mechanism of actions of natural products.

Bio: 

Nishant is a PhD candidate at the Brunaugh lab since the Fall of 2022. He completed his Bachelor's in Chemical Technology from ICT, Mumbai in India. As a Master's student, he studies respirable drug powders and their dissolution and diffusion through healthy and diseased mucus. He is passionate, dedicated, and scientifically driven. He began his studies at the University of Michigan in 2021 and is studying novel pulmonary drug delivery systems.

Hobbies: cooking, blogging, traveling, and watching Bollywood films.

Research Interests: 

Developing pharmaceutical interventions that help treat opportunistic infections and restore lung microbiome diversity in chronic disease states, through both antibiotic and probiotic delivery approaches.

Research Interests: 

Natural products present in plant extracts and medicinal foods and evaluating these compounds for preventive and/or therapeutic effects.

Research Interests: 

Particle engineering for innovative pharmaceutical manufacturing of orally inhalable solid dosage forms, advanced characterization of pharmaceutical solids, and novel formulation design for pulmonary drug delivery systems.

[email protected]

[email protected]

Julia Colarossi, 4th year, B.S. Pharmaceutical Sciences (she/her) 

Bio: 

Alyssa is an undergraduate research assistant who joined the lab in Fall 2024. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Biology, Health, and Society either on the pre-medical or pre-dentistry track. Alyssa explains that she joined the Brunaugh Lab because of the unique opportunity to research modulators involved with Cystic Fibrosis & respiratory disease. The lab is one of her favorite places on campus, because of the camaraderie and atmosphere of her lab mates. Hobbies: cooking, tennis/pickleball, traveling, watching movies, hiking, fashion, and reading. 

Research Interest: Developing different methods of drug inhalation to help treat infections in pulmonary drug delivery, development of in vitro assays for monitoring drug dissolution and diffusion through cell culturing mucus.

Ziting Chen, Research Specialist Associate (she/her)

Bio: 

She is am originally from Suzhou, China and studied animal science during her undergraduate at UC Davis and master at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her master project was to understand glycogen metabolism during early pregnancy in mice. In her free time, she would go bird-watching and cooking.

Research Interests: 

Drug developing and the mechanism of virus-host interaction