Congratulations to our 2025 Innovator & Motivator Award recipients! We invite you to celebrate them with us on Thursday, November 6th at Pilot Project – Wrigleyville.
Innovator Award Recipients
Dr. Gitika Thakur
Postdoctoral Associate, College of Medicine, University of Illinois
Dr. Gitika Thakur has made impactful contributions to regenerative medicine and neurodegenerative disease research through her innovative work differentiating human stem cells into insulin-producing pancreatic cells and modeling hereditary spastic paraplegia using patient-derived iPSCs. Her cutting-edge studies on 3D bioprinting of neural tissue, development of LXR agonist-based neuroprotective therapies, and mentorship of emerging scientists exemplify her dedication to advancing translational biomedical research.
Bio: I am currently working as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. I am highly motivated researcher with over five years of specialized experience in stem cell and neurodegenerative disease research. My current work focuses on using human ESCs and iPSCs to model hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) based axonal defects and identifying therapeutic agents to mitigate nerve degeneration in motor neuron diseases. I earned my Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Biotechnology and Veterinary Science from Gyeongsang National University, South Korea.
Motivator Award Recipients
Dr. Lisa Stabryla
Assistant Professor, College of Engineering, University of Illinois Chicago
Dr. Lisa Stabryla has made significant contributions to environmental engineering through her pioneering research on sustainable, nano-enabled antimicrobial materials and her leadership in advancing diversity and inclusion in STEM. At the University of Illinois Chicago, she has built a dynamic research program that bridges nanotechnology, the environment, and public health while empowering women and first-generation students through mentorship and advocacy.
Bio: Lisa Stabryla is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Her research supports the sustainable design of next-generation, nano-enabled antimicrobial materials, and broadly advances the application of engineered nanomaterials at the intersection of environmental and public health. Dr. Stabryla is an expert in nanoparticle synthesis and characterization and has extensive experience evaluating their antimicrobial efficacy and establishing relationships between physicochemical nanoparticle properties and their underlying mechanisms of antimicrobial activity. Her research also applies principles of evolutionary microbiology to investigate the mechanisms driving antimicrobial resistance (AMR), with a focus on exploring how microbial evolution and fitness can be leveraged to inform the design of novel antimicrobial strategies and to enhance methods for rapid AMR detection. Her work has been published in Nature Nanotechnology, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, and Environmental Science: Nano. Prior to joining UIC, she was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where she used next-generation sequencing technologies and culture-based approaches to explore development of novel, physiologically-based, rapid detection methods for drug-resistant pathogens and assisted in developing AMR standards for wastewater surveillance. She obtained her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2021, where her work was funded by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. She also received her B.S. in Engineering Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2015.