Research

Utilizing chemistry, materials science and engineering techniques, we explore the interface of biomaterials and medicine and address fundamental questions in the two cross-disciplinary fields. One specific goal lies in developing multifunctional biomaterials for medical applications including therapeutic delivery and regenerative medicine. For example, we investigate the synergistic effects of combinatorial drug delivery for cancer treatment through the creation of nanocarrier plaforms which can simultaneously deliver therapeutics and small interfering RNA (siRNA).

In parallel, we are interested in developing synthetic biomaterials and processing techniques to fabricate hydrogels and scaffolds for use in drug delivery and tissue engineering. In particular we focus on biomaterials engineering to understand structure-function relationships and investigate the effects of biomaterials characteristics on therapeutics release, and cellular/tissue interactions.