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An undergraduate researcher turns personal history into pioneering advances for reproductive science.

Sadie Meyer’s lifelong interest in women’s health sparked a little before her birth. Conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) with her aunt as her mother’s egg donor, Meyer grew up knowing how complex and fragile fertility can be. The whole family’s grateful the procedure worked, but for many others, it hasn’t, or it’s too expensive to even try.

“There’s a growing need in today’s world for assistive fertility technologies,” says Meyer ’26, a biomedical engineering and mathematics major in Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) and College of Arts and Sciences.

Now, as a student researcher, she’s channeling that perspective into innovative approaches to women’s health. “I’ve always been interested in women’s health,” she says. “It was just the question of how I was going to get there.”

A Strong Start

From her first day on campus, Meyer dove into research. She joined biomedical and chemical engineering professor James Henderson’s lab in the BioInspired Institute, where she spent three years studying biomaterials. “I wanted to come to Syracuse because I knew I could come onto campus in my first week of freshman year and find a position in a lab,” she says. “I was eager to learn and was supported from the beginning.”

In the Henderson Lab, Meyer worked on a project to eliminate the risk of infections on medical device surfaces using shape-memory polymers—3D printed materials that shift into a predetermined shape when exposed to heat or another external trigger. Typically, researchers grow cells in Petri dishes or flasks, but those conditions don’t reflect the body’s complex environments. The shape-changing platform can mimic lifelike conditions, allowing the lab to study how cells behave in more realistic environments—something that hasn’t been done before.

When coated with another polymer or protein, the change in shape causes the coating to wrinkle. Those wrinkles can help prevent bacteria from maturing into biofilms while creating a platform that supports cell growth.

That experience gave Meyer pointed direction. “I’m excited about taking what I’ve learned in biomaterials and applying it in women’s health applications,” she says.

Now, as a senior, she’s doing just that in Professor Andrea Joseph’s lab. Building on her earlier work with surface textures, Meyer is investigating how different surfaces influence the behavior of cervical and vaginal epithelial cells in the female reproductive tract (FRT). Researchers have limited models to study these cells, but the wrinkled platform opens the door to key questions: How does surface texture affect cell structure and function? Does growing them on a more lifelike material cause them to behave more like they do in the body—growing in layers, producing mucus and preventing the passage of pathogens? “It’s a huge collaboration that I’d never thought would be possible for me,” Meyer says.

Broadening the Lens

“For students, being part of research is another way of learning,” says Joseph, assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in ECS.

The Joseph Lab is developing nanoparticle drug delivery systems for maternal, fetal and neonatal health, with a particular interest in the vaginal microbiome and preterm birth. “There’s no explanation for preterm birth,” says Joseph, who was born premature along with 10% of babies worldwide. “We don’t have a way to prevent it or effectively treat the long-term consequences, such as neurodevelopmental disorders and increased inflammation in the body.”

Infertility, endometriosis, preeclampsia and bacterial vaginosis are some other women’s health disorders we don’t know much about. “My lab is interested in developing more effective, more targeted therapeutics for this range of applications,” she says.

Certain therapeutics might be ineffective because, for example, the FRT is lined with mucus, which can block medications from reaching their target cells. Joseph’s lab is exploring the use of nanoparticles—engineered particles thousands of times smaller than a human hair—to “protect” the medications as they move through the body and improve their effectiveness.

“It’s clear that the vaginal microbiome is associated with women who have adverse pregnancy and reproductive outcomes,” Joseph says. “We know certain bacteria are linked to healthier pregnancies, while others are associated with complications. But we don’t know exactly why. We’re missing a link of biological understanding.”

Finding Her Focus

That unknown sets the stage for Meyer’s project. She is culturing cervical and vaginal epithelial cells and plating them onto the wrinkled platforms she first encountered in the Henderson Lab. Next, she will perform functional experiments.

Confident in lab techniques, experimental methods and writing, Meyer says she’s never been this excited about a project. “This is the first time I can see the connection to research I could pursue in my career—something I’d be proud having a role in,” she says.

Joseph takes an individualized approach to mentorship. “The idea of being at the very front of discovery was exciting to me at a young age, and I think undergraduate students are more successful when they have ownership over their projects,” she says. She guides their interests and scope of work, checks in when experiments fail and helps them plan what comes next: poster symposiums, publications, graduate school applications.

Beyond the Lab

Meyer credits much of her growth at Syracuse to this mentorship and the resources that have propelled her forward. In 2024, she earned a Goldwater Scholarship, one of the most prestigious awards for undergraduate researchers in the United States. Jolynn Parker, director of the Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising, worked closely with Meyer to help her articulate her research ambitions and the experiences that set her apart.

Meyer has also learned the global scope of her field through professional experiences. She studied nanotechnology in a National Science Foundation-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates at Northwestern University, completed an internship at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan, and assisted in data analytics for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. “It’s been so inspiring to watch Sadie clarify her goals and gain experience in research directly related to her interests,” Parker says, “and it’s motivating to know that the resources we provide here at Syracuse University have supported her in that development.”

Looking Ahead

Meyer plans to pursue medical school, specialize in OB-GYN and focus on reproductive endocrinology. This path would allow her to combine clinical care with research on fertility and IVF technologies.

“There’s such a need for women’s health research in both understanding the biology that’s specific to women and these disorders and developing targeted treatment approaches,” Joseph says. “My hope for the lab is to be at the front of both of those arms. We need more engineering technologies and devices to make progress in this field—and that’s where Sadie’s work fits in.”

Meyer shares similar sentiments. “Most of the basis of medicine is representative of male patients,” she says. “Knowledge is power when deciding what’s best for you and your body, and if science doesn’t show you what you want to know, where else are you going to find it?”

She adds: “It’s incredible to be in my position and have some sort of potential role in advancing women’s health. There’s so much we don’t know yet.”