Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry

• Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Alberta, 2007
• Postdoc, University of California, Berkeley, 2008-2012

Precision Medicine represents a new era of medicine to revolutionize disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Central to this national mission is the development of enabling technologies and novel biomarkers that substantially improve early cancer diagnosis and personalized treatment. Our group works on the frontier research at the nexus of chemistry, material science, bioengineering, and medicine to develop transformative micro/nanoscale tools to advance precision medicine of challenging diseases, in particular, cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Our technology innovation has been evolving from single-function biochips to nano-engineered lab-on-a-chip system and to smart bioanalyzer powered by robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). The applications are focused on a spectrum of blood-based biomarkers, including extracellular vesicles (e.g., exosomes), proteins, DNA/RNA and glycans, aiming to develop non-invasive precision diagnosis and monitoring of cancer and AD. We are also passionate about translational research to bring the technological innovations from the benchtop to bedside. Collaborating with biologists and clinicians, for instance, we continue to translate the new tools into exosome research to advance liquid biopsy-based diagnosis and precision immunotherapy of cancer. Our research programs are currently funded by several grants from National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies.