SLAS Announces $100,000 Graduate Education Fellowship Grant Awarded to Lena Landaverde of Boston University

Oak Brook, IL (March 19, 2026) – The Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) is pleased to announce Lena Landaverde, MS, PhD candidate in the Biomedical Engineering program at Boston University College of Engineering (Boston, MA, USA), as the 2026 SLAS Graduate Education Fellowship Grant recipient.

Lena Landaverde, MS, PhD candidate in the Biomedical Engineering program at Boston University College of Engineering (Boston, MA, USA), has been awarded the 2026 Graduate Education Fellowship Grant from the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), for her innovative work combining 3D in vitro cell modeling and robotic automation to advance women’s health research. Her research focuses on uterine fibroids, the most common benign tumors in the uterus, and how environmental factors may influence their growth and behavior. Using lab-grown organoid models and scalable high-throughput approaches, Landaverde studies cellular responses, extracellular matrix dynamics and inflammation markers—methods that could provide new insights into disease mechanisms and potential interventions. 

“I am honored to receive the 2026 SLAS Graduate Education Fellowship. The fellowship is important to me because it unlocks the opportunity to advance women's health through the intersection of LLM-driven robotic automation and in vitro cellular models. It's proof that propelling multidisciplinary research can lead to innovative solutions,” said Landaverde. 

“We are proud to support Landaverde’s research, which is an excellent example of SLAS’s mission to support emerging leaders in quantitative biosciences,” said SLAS CEO Vicki Loise, CAE, CMP. “Not only will the grant support her scientific research monetarily, but it also allows her to take advantage of the vast expertise available within the SLAS community.” 

About the SLAS Graduate Education Fellowship Grant

Judging criteria for the SLAS Graduate Education Fellowship Grant is based on the applicability of the student researcher’s work to laboratory automation and screening, originality and creativity of the scientific approach, quality of the science, presentation of the research objectives, and the quality and capability of the institution and its educational program to support the grant.

The SLAS Fellowship Grant Program was introduced in 2015 to facilitate educational opportunities for outstanding students pursuing graduate degrees related to quantitative biosciences and/or life sciences R&D. This program helps to realize a fundamental tenet of SLAS’s mission: to advance the fields of laboratory science and technology by nurturing the next generation of professional scientists.

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SLAS (Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening) is an international professional society of academic, industry and government life sciences researchers and the developers and providers of laboratory automation technology. The SLAS mission is to bring together researchers in academia, industry and government to advance life sciences discovery and technology via education, knowledge exchange and global community building.

SLAS publishes two peer-reviewed and MEDLINE-indexed scientific journals, SLAS Discovery and SLAS Technology. For more information about SLAS and its journals, visit www.slas.org/journals.

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