(4ax) Advanced Biomaterials for Next Generation Biomedical Devices and Biological Investigation

Biomaterials science is a multidisciplinary field with implications in global health, disease detection and prevention, drug delivery, regenerative medicine, and the exploration of basic biological science. Advances in this area require strength not only in materials development but also fundamental biology, disease pathology and treatment, cellular and molecular assays, and an intimate knowledge of how these two fields interface.

I feel that my graduate school experience and postdoctoral training have positioned me to make significant contributions to this field. I completed my Ph.D. research with Professor Stuart Cooper at The Ohio State University where we focused on developing new polymeric materials which specifically adhere endothelial progenitor cells, a type of adult stem cell which has been implicated in cardiovascular maintenance and repair and which holds great potential in regenerative medicine. This work culminated in the publication of six manuscripts to peer reviewed journals (two second author papers and four first author papers). Also, I wrote two book sections for the textbook Biomaterials Science 3^rd Edition.

I continued my time in the Cooper Lab as a postdoctoral researcher for one year to work on improving the isolation and culture of rare adult stem cells from peripheral blood by separating the cells with magnetic and bioactive nanoparticles and culturing them on cell-specific electrospun scaffolds. My contributions to this research focused on synthesizing and characterizing bioactive polymers, fabricating three dimensional scaffolds via electrospinning, and assessing the response of primary human cells. These contributions resulted in two peer reviewed manuscripts (one first author and one second author).

Currently I am completing a three year postdoc with Linda Griffith and Paula Hammond of MIT and Mary Chan-Park of Nanyang Technological University through the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology in the BioSystems and Micromechanics Interdisciplinary Research Group (SMART BioSyM). My current work focuses on the development of a novel microwell array for the high throughput in situ cloning of rare cells from patient samples, research which promises to provide unprecedented insight into the complex behavior of single cells from patient samples during ex vivo culture. As of May 2013 two first author papers from this research are near completion and two other manuscripts are under review which focus on additional work I have done in the Chan-Park lab.

In addition to developing as a researcher, I have also taken initiative to grow as an educator. During my time at OSU I served as a teaching assistant for one term of Chemical Reaction Kinetics and Reactor Design and two terms of Introduction to High Polymer Engineering. During the autumn 2008 term I received the Outstanding TA Award. In addition to my required TA activities I earned a Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization in College and University Teaching (requiring the completion of 20 credit hours of education-related classes) and participated in Ohio State’s Preparing Future Faculty program where I learned about the life of faculty.  Furthermore, I developed the Chemical Engineering Mentored Teaching Experience, a course where interested graduate students are exposed to educational theory and allowed to teach three courses in a chemical engineering classroom (the development of this course was published in Chemical Engineering Education). I subsequently participated in the Chemical Engineering Mentored Teaching Experience. I was also the independent instructor for the course Advanced Separation Processes where I organized and presented course material; developed homework sets, exams, and a distillation project which required the students to use Aspen software; oversaw the activities of five teaching assistants; and assigned final grades. I am currently in discussion with the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at NTU to co-teach a course on polymer science during the 2013 school year.

I am excited to begin the next phase of my career as an assistant professor, and I look forward to mentoring students and building and sustaining a research program which focuses on developing the next generation of polymeric biomaterials. From a materials perspective my interests include substrate-independent and scalable biofunctionalization techniques which can be applied to a wide variety of biomaterials (an objective which builds on my existing strength in chemical surface modifications, plasma treatment techniques, and LbL thin film deposition, and micro/nano-fabrication technology). Also, my existing research has focused on isolation and expansion of rare adult stem cells.  In addition to further exploring the utility of these cells in regenerative medicine applications, I am also interested in further understanding the heterogeneity of these cell populations which may provide valuable insight into how to best apply them clinically. 

Due to the size limitations of this abstract I cannot go into detail about the specific research projects I have in mind; however, I hope to speak with you about them at the AIChE meeting. Though I currently live and work in Singapore, I will be in the United States for at least one month during February/March 2014 to facilitate interviewing for positions in the US.