Margaret F. Bennewitz

Dr. Margaret Bennewitz received her BS in Bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007 and her PhD from Yale University in Biomedical Engineering in 2012. At Yale, she specialized in MRI cell tracking and contrast agent development for the diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme. After completing her doctorate, Dr. Bennewitz accepted a postdoctoral fellowship in the M+Visión Program, a collaborative venture between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and hospitals and laboratories in Madrid, Spain. Unlike a traditional postdoctorate, this program searched globally for scholars who would define their own translational imaging projects centered around clinically relevant unmet needs. One of her projects involved the early detection of ovarian cancer using optical imaging. To diversify her imaging skills, Dr. Bennewitz subsequently accepted a second postdoctoral fellowship in the Vascular Medicine Institute at the University of Pittsburgh-School of Medicine. There, she created a setup to perform multiphoton imaging of the blood vessels in the lungs of live mice with sickle cell disease. Dr. Bennewitz used this technique to study the cellular and molecular mechanism of vascular blockage (vaso-occlusion) in the lungs. Dr. Bennewitz joined the faculty at West Virginia University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering in August 2017. Her lab specializes in the development of new MRI contrast agents for early breast cancer detection and the use of in vitro and in vivo fluorescence imaging techniques to elucidate the role of the tumor microenvironment in promoting breast cancer metastasis to the lungs.