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title: Home
description: The Brunaugh Lab studies transport in complex, dynamic environments and engineers therapeutic interventions across barriers, particles, and respiratory systems.
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    <h1>Brunaugh Lab</h1>
    <p class="dept">Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences · University of Michigan</p>
    <p class="tagline">We study the rules of transport in complex, dynamic environments — and engineer therapeutic interventions that exploit them.</p>
    <p class="description">Airway mucus, microbial biofilms, drying droplets, and particles transforming in solution — the environments where therapeutics succeed or fail are heterogeneous, structured, and constantly changing. Our lab develops the physical theory, measurement platforms, and engineered formulations needed to understand these environments and act on them.</p>
    <div class="hero-actions">
      <a href="/research/" class="btn btn-maize">Our Research →</a>
      <a href="/opportunities/" class="btn btn-outline">Join the Lab →</a>
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      <p class="section-kicker">A shared logic across the lab</p>
      <h2 id="system-overview-title">Designing for effective reach</h2>
      <p>Across biological barriers and particle-forming processes, we ask how an intervention changes as it moves through a structured environment — and whether enough remains available at the place and time it must act.</p>
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    <nav class="system-map" aria-label="Explore the lab's conceptual framework">
      <a class="system-map-stage system-map-stage--system" href="/approach/#how-this-drives-the-work">
        <span class="system-map-number">01</span>
        <h3>Therapeutic system</h3>
        <p>Molecules, particles, formulations</p>
        <span class="system-map-link">Design across domains <span aria-hidden="true">→</span></span>
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      <span class="system-map-arrow" aria-hidden="true">→</span>
      <a class="system-map-stage system-map-stage--environment" href="/approach/#energy-landscapes">
        <span class="system-map-number">02</span>
        <h3>Changing environment</h3>
        <p>Mucus, biofilm, droplets, solution</p>
        <span class="system-map-link">Explore landscapes <span aria-hidden="true">→</span></span>
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      <span class="system-map-arrow" aria-hidden="true">→</span>
      <a class="system-map-stage system-map-stage--competition" href="/approach/#timescale-competitions">
        <span class="system-map-number">03</span>
        <h3>Competing processes</h3>
        <p>Diffuse · bind · transform · clear</p>
        <span class="system-map-link">Compare timescales <span aria-hidden="true">→</span></span>
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      <span class="system-map-arrow" aria-hidden="true">→</span>
      <a class="system-map-stage system-map-stage--reach" href="/approach/#effective-reach">
        <span class="system-map-number">04</span>
        <h3>Effective reach</h3>
        <p>Availability where biology occurs</p>
        <span class="system-map-link">Define useful reach <span aria-hidden="true">→</span></span>
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    <p class="cta-link"><a href="/approach/">Explore how we think →</a></p>
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<section class="latest-work" aria-labelledby="latest-work-title">
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        <p class="section-kicker">Latest from the lab</p>
        <h2 id="latest-work-title">Recent work</h2>
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      <a class="section-link" href="/publications/">All publications →</a>
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    <div class="latest-work-grid">
      {% assign corresponding_publications = site.data.publications | where: "corresponding", true %}
      {% for publication in corresponding_publications limit: 3 %}
      <article class="latest-work-card">
        {% if publication.image %}
        <a class="latest-work-image" href="{{ publication.url }}" aria-label="View article: {{ publication.title | escape }}">
          <img src="{{ publication.image | relative_url }}" alt="{{ publication.image_alt | escape }}" loading="lazy" decoding="async">
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        {% endif %}
        <div class="latest-work-content">
          <p class="latest-work-meta">{{ publication.year }} · {{ publication.journal }}</p>
          <h3><a href="{{ publication.url }}">{{ publication.title }}</a></h3>
          <a class="card-link" href="{{ publication.url }}">View article <span aria-hidden="true">↗</span></a>
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      {% endfor %}
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        <h3>Understanding the environment</h3>
        <p>We map how drugs, particles, and biological structures interact with the heterogeneous, dynamic media that govern their fate — the spatial and temporal physics that determines whether a treatment works or fails.</p>
        <a href="/research/barrier-cartography/" class="card-link">Learn more →</a>
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        <h3>Engineering across domains</h3>
        <p>Every material choice in a therapeutic system propagates consequences across multiple physical domains at once — manufacturing, stability, transport, and biological activity. We design formulations and particles by holding the full consequence space present, not by optimizing one property at a time.</p>
        <a href="/research/spatiotemporal-synergy/" class="card-link">Learn more →</a>
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        <h3>Building new tools</h3>
        <p>We develop experimental platforms and instrumentation that capture drug and material behavior under physiologically realistic conditions — replacing surrogate measurements with direct observation at the scale where outcomes are determined.</p>
        <a href="/research/inhaled-product-performance/" class="card-link">Learn more →</a>
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    <p class="cta-link"><a href="/approach/">How we think →</a></p>
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<section class="callout">
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      <h2>We're looking for curious, creative researchers.</h2>
      <p>Our lab welcomes graduate students, postdocs, and visiting scholars with backgrounds across pharmacy, engineering, chemistry, and biology. If you want to work at the intersection of physical science and biological complexity, we'd like to hear from you.</p>
      <a href="/opportunities/" class="btn btn-maize">See opportunities →</a>
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