[1] While completing her PhD, she became interested in the ways actin deforms in response to external mechanical stress.
[2] She was later accepted as a Pappalardo Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to conduct independent research in the areas of biophysics.
[4] Shortly after she began teaching, Gardel received a Director’s Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health.
[5] The next year, Gardel was part of a research program examining "the sudden and dramatic transformations that occur in processes where small-scale structural rearrangements result in rapid and far-reaching outcomes.
[8] The following year, Gardel and Jennifer Ross, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, received a four-year, $800,000 INSPIRE grant from the National Science Foundation to study the fundamental physical laws that govern the behavior of cellular materials.