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Mariah L. Arral is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. David Kaplan’s group at Tufts University.
When looking for a postdoctoral program, Mariah wanted to expand her knowledge of drug delivery, biomaterials, and the immune system. At the same time, she aimed to develop her skills in grant writing and management alongside teaching and mentoring students.
Mariah was accepted into the Tufts IRACDA program in 2024, which provided three years of funding and the training she desired in grant management and teaching. However, the program's funding was pulled in April 2025 due to the Trump administration’s changes at the NIH.
She hopes to take the knowledge she gains from her Ph.D. and post-doctoral position to develop her own research program as a tenure-track professor.
Postdoctoral Studies
Graduate School
Mariah received her Ph.D. from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). She was an NIH NRSA F31 Fellow and former NSF GRFP Fellow in Prof. Kathryn Whitehead’s group. Her work focuses on developing new materials for lipid nanoparticles and understanding the relationship between materials, delivery, and immunogenicity.
During her tenure in the Whitehead lab, Mariah actively collaborated with her colleagues. She currently has eleven papers with her as an author, with several more submitted or in the pipeline. Mariah’s first-author papers, based on the five projects she led, have not been published yet, but she hopes to have an update on those soon!
For more information on Mariah’s work, please see the Reseach Section.
Back: Kyle Cochran, Rose Doerfler, Namit Chaudhary, and Nick Lamson. Front: Mariah Arral, Kathy Fein, and Prof. Kathryn Whitehead.
Outside of her graduate school research, Mariah was an active member of the Department of Chemical Engineering. She was the 2020 president of the Chemical Engineering Graduate Student Association (ChEGSA). During her presidency, Mariah organized events for students to engage while social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic and planned professional development. ChEGSA’s efforts were highlighted by Department Head Prof. Anne Robinson in Fortune Magazine. Mariah also led an effort to establish a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Chair position for ChEGSA. Mariah also started the First-Year mentoring program, which matches first-year Ph.D. students with those who are older. This program is still ongoing. In 2019, she was a Social Chair for ChEGSA, helping to organize department events. In 2021, Mariah was one of the inaugural Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Co-Chairs in ChEGSA. During her tenure, they started a Graduate Student Application Assistance Program to assist students in applying to graduate school, which continued after her graduation.
Mariah also participated in department outreach activities for young students in STEM and participated in the Skype A Scientist Program.
Controlled Release Society (CRS)
When Mariah asked her Ph.D. advisor what conferences people attended in their field her response was that, “CRS is our home.”
Mariah took those words to heart and began being involved with CRS in 2019 when she became a Young Sincets Commiteee. In 2020 Mariah joined the YSC as a committee member, and procied to hold the leadership positions as the Marketing Lead and as team leader on several sessions held at the annual meeting.
After attending the 2021 annual meeting in Montreal, Canada, Mariah joined the CRS Equity Diversity and Inclusion committee, where she helped in organizing the committee's session at the annual meeting and in training the CRS board of directors and leadership on ED&I topics.
In 2023, Mariah was awarded the CRS Member of the year award and invited to give a short talk during the opening ceremony. During her talk, Mariah detailed the challenges in being an openly disabled researcher, but also noted that she had found her home research community at CRS and was dedicated to continuing to grow and ED&I within her community.
American Institue of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)
Mariah has been a member of AIChE since her sophomore year of college. She attened her first AIChE anual meeting in 2016 where she won a first place poster award.
In 2020, Mariah was asked to join AIChE’s DORC team to assit in promotion of the disability community at AIChE. After asisting in DORIC effors Mariah was asked to surve on the Socity Opperating Counce (Sioc) and is currenly in her second term.
Mariah’s dedication to AIChE, her research career, and engineering education was recognized in 2023 hen she was named one of AIChE’s 35 under 35.
Engineering Education Research
In addition to her RNA work, Mariah engages in engineering education research. During her undergraduate studies, Mariah started a project to understand and develop strategies around mentoring for neurodivergent STEM students. Mariah also works on the accessibility and inclusion of disabled students in STEM education and research. She has a solo author paper titled “10 Tips to Make Your Course More Accessible and Inclusive to Disabled Students.” Mariah has been invited to give keynote presentations on her disability work, and in the fall of 2022, Mariah will be inducted into the University of New Hampshire Diversity Hall of Fame.
Mariah Arral and Prof. Jeffery Halpern
Undergraduate Studies
Previously, Mariah worked for Prof. Jeffery Halpern at the University of New Hampshire on creating electrochemical biosensors. Mariah’s work focused on the electrochemical detection of NOHA, a stable intermediate in the urea cycle. During her four years of research she published two first author papers, won a National AIChE poster award, and obtained two fellowships. Mariah also held the role of Lab Manager and trained most incoming students about experimental methods and safety.
Personal Life
When asked where she is from, Mariah responds with New England, as she has lived in all states except for Connecticut. She grew up in Maine, though she was born in Massachusetts, and most of her extended family lived there. Mariah’s mom works as a crisis manager, while her father works in the restraint industry. She attended public school in Waterboro, Maine, before going to college in New Hampshire. Mariah is the middle child of three girls. Her older sister, Savanna, is a Lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts, and her brother-in-law, Mike Davis is a Physician's Assistant. Mariah’s younger sister, Sierra, lives in Los Angeles and works in catering.
Mariah currently lives in Malden, MA, with her husband, Nicholas Weber, and their two cats, Sucralose (Sukie) and Lilian (Lily).
In Mariah’s free time, she enjoys reading, traveling, cooking, and running. Currently, Mariah has been to eleven countries and has run in three road races.
Below are some photos of Mariah, her friends, and family.
