{"id":1750,"date":"2010-09-29T15:10:30","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T15:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=1750"},"modified":"2010-09-29T15:10:30","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T15:10:30","slug":"max-villa-a-ph-d-candidate-journeys-across-fields-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/09\/max-villa-a-ph-d-candidate-journeys-across-fields-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Villa: a Ph.D. candidate journeys across fields, country"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
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Villa and LeShane at Hoosier Pass<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Emily Jerome<\/p>\n

Max Villa (B.S., M.S., Ph.D. candidate) planned something special between finishing his Master\u2019s degree in Mechanical Engineering and starting his Ph.D. in Materials Science: a 4,300 mile, three month long cross country bike ride from Yorktown, VA to Astoria, OR. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI had done some bike touring previously and really enjoy traveling by bike. The pace at which you\u2019re moving is just fast enough that you can cover some distance, but not too fast, so you can pull over and check out a view. Touring back roads takes you to some beautiful places you just wouldn\u2019t see traveling at high speed on the interstate. You also feel great the whole way, your heart pumping and legs moving. The hardest part was taking the time off, but in the context of a lifetime, it\u2019s just a blink. There is just so much of the U.S. to see, I wanted to get as large of a cross-section as I could.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Kevin Leshane (B.S., Physiology and Neurobiology and Journalism double major, 2008) joined Villa on the trip straight west from Virginia to Colorado (following the \u201c1976 Bicentennial Route\u201d published by Adventure Cycling in Missoula, MT), then through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and finally Oregon. With \u201cabout two months of riding and one month of exploring off the bike,\u201d the pair bunked down at city parks, fire houses, churches and \u201cthe homes of incredibly generous Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

They maintained a good pace; the shortest distance they covered in a day was about 30 miles in the Appalachians, scaling the steepest grades in the country. The longest was an over-120-mile day across Kansas. That, however, was \u201cwith tailwinds.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trip was not without challenges beyond steep mountain roads, including injuries and \u201cone lightning storm where there was no place to hide.\u201d Villa found himself \u201csitting in a ditch on the side of the road until it filled up with water, then I had to sit on my bike with the tarp over my head. The lightning was pretty close, but as with most lightning storms it didn\u2019t last more than 20 minutes. I just timed it on my watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked what he enjoyed most about the trip, Villa responds: \u201cSeeing the Rockies on the horizon after riding through the dust flats of eastern Colorado. Riding downhill for two days along the Lochsa River in Idaho. Getting invited to a wedding on the Ohio River. Hot springs. Meeting other riders from all over the world. Jumping in lots of rivers in Missouri. Staying in a ghost town with a potter living in an old gas station. Riding along the Oregon coast after reaching the Pacific. Those stand out as highlights, but the whole thing was pretty enjoyable. America is a wide, beautiful and incredibly friendly place! We were helped from all manner of folks throughout the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The intense physical trip required some of the skills he has come to value in his engineering career. \u201cEngineering is in some way about taking a big task and breaking it down into smaller parts. I suppose that\u2019s what we did every day, breaking down climbs into the smaller goals. Another part of working through a big task is pace. It\u2019s important to move quickly, but not so quick that you burn out. In the end, all problems are soluble, but you\u2019ve got to stick around to see it. Engineers are pretty determined thinkers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Villa first began developing that determination as an undergraduate majoring in Mechanical Engineering. \u201cI wasn\u2019t sure exactly what at the time, but I knew I wanted to do something creative that would contribute to society in a big way.\u201d His studies helped him \u201cgain a broad knowledge of how to make things. \u00a0I felt upon graduation that I had just scratched the surface of some of the technical subjects I had been exposed to and I also really loved research. It was a natural choice to continue on in Mechanical Engineering for my Master\u2019s degree.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0combination of\u00a0engineering and biology Villa explored in his master’s work helped jump-started an ongoing fascination with biomedical engineering. For his thesis project he developed a microfluidic device to culture embryonic stem cells. \u201cSuch a system affords greater control of the stem cell microenvironment and therefore cell fate. I came across a paper where a group replaced a woman\u2019s collapsed bronchial tube with decellularised donor tissue seeded with the patient\u2019s own stem cells. There was no immune rejection and the patient made a recovery that translated into a huge improvement in her quality of life. I thought that was really cool, so I began thinking about the fields of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Villa spent a short time in the biomaterials industry after completing his M.S. degree, then\u00a0returned to UConn to complete a Ph.D. with Dr. Mei Wei\u2019s group in Materials Science\u00a0& Engineering. He is currently working on the development of an experimental platform to visualize the interplay of progenitor cells, scaffold and new bone in 3D and real-time during the repair process. \u201cWe\u2019re using a combination of transgenic fluorescent mice, which allows us to track specific cell components as they differentiate into bone forming cells, and 2-photon microscopy for noninvasive three-dimensional scanning of the repair zone. Using this platform we can get a better idea of the repair process and make the appropriate modifications to our scaffold and the progenitor population that is seeded into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the journey of a lifetime already under his belt, Villa notes that now \u201cI think about time and space a little differently. If you\u2019re enjoying yourself there\u2019s nothing out of reach. I would encourage everyone to truly dream big; you\u2019d be surprised what you\u2019re capable of \"\"<\/a>!”<\/p>\n

For more information on Prof. Mei Wei\u2019s lab: http:\/\/weilaboratory.engr.uconn.edu\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Max Villa (B.S., M.S., Ph.D. candidate) planned something special between finishing his Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and starting his Ph.D. in Materials Science: a 4,300 mile, three month long cross country bike ride from Yorktown, VA to Astoria, OR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":1868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 23:12:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1750"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=1750"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}