Research

The diagnosis and treatment of major diseases is becoming increasingly reliant on synthetic materials. Understanding the interaction of synthesized materials with living systems is therefore an important problem. While a great deal of attention has been given to making new biologically relevant materials, systematic studies needed to understand such interactions are limited. Certainly, materials, especially those with nanostructured interfaces, can be developed to exhibit enhanced biological activity by utilizing insight from such studies. We believe that a major leap forward in developing new nanomaterials for biomedical applications can be achieved only by probing the material properties systematically to formulate new design rules.We are interested in probing some fundamental questions about the nanomaterial-cell interaction, especially how does the molecular structure of its building blocks affect its bioactivity.

Our group is interested in integrating concepts from chemistry, materials science, and biology to design nano-structured materials with enhanced functionality for applications in biomedical implants, cancer diagnostics, and drug delivery.