Emily Mangus, a doctoral student at Kansas University, feeds microscopic cells that she is using for an experiment. Mangus earned a three-year, $90,000 award from the National Science Foundation to research liver regeneration. by Richard Gwin

Wearing a white lab coat and gloves, Kansas University graduate student Emily Mangus carefully feeds microscopic cells inside a plastic container with 24 wells. The pink-colored food will help the cells survive long enough for her next experiment.

She works under a special hood that keeps the area as sterile as possible. One bad germ and the experiment is over.

“We joke that they are like our kids,” she said of the cells.

She spends about five hours a day inside a small lab on the first floor of Learned Hall on KU’s main campus. She’s researching liver regeneration.

Her goal is to develop an injectable gel-like substance that will help people with liver failure. The substance could be used to help people live longer so they can get a liver transplant, or it could be used as a treatment.

Mangus, 25, is able to do the potentially ground-breaking research because she received a prestigious, three-year $90,000 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She is conducting her research in association with KU Medical Center, under the guidance of Cory Berkland and Michael Detamore, both associate professors of chemical and petroleum engineering.

Detamore said if she developed a new technology to help the liver regenerate on its own, then she would be able to help out a tremendous population of patients who might not otherwise survive.

Detamore described Mangus, who is pursuing her doctorate in bioengineering, as a bright and motivated student.

“I think she has a lot of talent across the board from education to research to outreach,” he said. “I think she has tremendous potential in her future, and it’s a privilege to be a part of that.”

Mangus became interested in liver research during an internship in 2007 at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C.

“I sort of fell in love with the liver that summer,” she said with laughter. “I just thought it was so cool because the liver performs over 500 different functions, and I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t even think of anything else that can do that.’”

During her internship, she worked on developing a technology to kill cancerous tumors in the liver. While there, she met a patient who had liver cancer and he thanked Mangus for her research and work.

“That was pretty motivating,” she said.

Mangus said bioengineering is the perfect fit for her because it combines her love of math and medicine — something she picked up from her parents. Her father, Terry Beck, is a mechanical engineering professor at Kansas State University, and her mother, Claire, is a registered nurse.

She originally wanted to be veterinarian, but decided they didn’t do enough with numbers.

“I really like math,” she said.

She has been a math tutor throughout college and teaches engineering courses to high school and junior high school students.

During the 2011-2012 school year, she will be mentoring a sixth-grade science class in Topeka. She will do this through a separate National Science Foundation initiative that comes with a $30,000 stipend.

“It’s my hope that I can get these students excited about science and engineering,” she said. “It’s a neat opportunity.”