Associations of air pollution with peripheral inflammation (Dr. Hostinar) & Researching mycelium composites  (Dr. La Saponara)

Associations of air pollution with peripheral inflammation and cardiac autonomic physiology in children

Dr. Camelia Hostinar (Associate Professor, Psychology) is a developmental psychologist who studies how the social environment shapes lifespan health, with a focus on the activity of the stress-response and immune systems. She is probing the pathways linking early-life stress to later disease and investigating protective processes that could short-circuit these adverse trajectories.

Researching mycelium composites for climate resilience and mitigation of antimicrobial resistance

Dr. Valeria La Saponara (Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) received her Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy. She worked as a research fellow at the MARS Center (Microgravity Advanced Research and Support Center), Italy, a subcontractor of NASA and the European Space Agency. She then went to the U.S. and completed her Master’s and Ph.D. in 2001, both in aerospace engineering, from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is now a tenured full professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Davis.   Most of her career has been spent on studying fossil-based materials and structures for aerospace, civil, naval and wind energy applications.   In 2016, Dr. La Saponara co-founded and was the Chief Technology Officer of a start-up company to design and build bicycle helmets for hard-to-fit children. As the sole engineer of a company of 2, she learnt a lot about bootstrapping and pivoting. While investigating the replacement of toxic plastics with biodegradable plastics, she learnt that the mycelial network and Paul Stamets were not just names related to Star Trek Discovery. She has been working with mycelium and biomass materials since 2019, even after the start-up shut down, for various projects related to environmental stewardship.