I am a graduate student at Northwestern University, exploring the intersection of nanotechnology and pharmaceutical science. I am actively contributing to nanomedicine design, and a co-crystallization strategy that I implemented are now used for co-delivering cargos that vary in hydrophobicity. Besides covalent chemistry, I engineered yolk-shell structures by supramolecular interaction, aiming at tuning their nanomechanical properties.
Before joining Northwestern, I enjoyed sunny days at UC San Diego, where I focus on phenolic-mediated assemblies, FRET-based nanosensors, and functional polypeptide structures, under the supervision of Prof. Jesse Jokerst. We use these materials to improve photoacoustic imaging contrast, photothermal transduction efficacy, and tumor penetration.
In my spare time, I enjoy building LEGOs 🤖, practicing kendo 🥷, and playing piano 🎹.
🌊 🎨 🎼 🏄 🔱 🦈 ⛩️ ⚔️ 🎾 🏀 ⛷️ 🎮 👻 🏊 🌊
M.S. in Nanoengineering, 2022
University of California, San Diego
B.A. in Piano Performance, 2021
Shanghai Conservatory of Music
B.S. in Pharmaceutical Science, 2020
China Pharmaceutical University
🔬 Scanning electron microscope img of poly-benzene-1,4-dithiol (pBDT) nanourchins.
🧪 Exp. ran by Yi, mentored by Dr Jiajing Zhou
🌈 AuNPs clustered due to Mpro protease, driven by the hydrophobicity difference of peptide motif.
🧪 Exp. ran by Dr Zhicheng Jin and Yi
My graduating design.
Drug-delivery-drug strategies for MDR reversal and enhanced apoptosis.
Inoculated a dozen 96-well plates before getting this perfect graph. Developed gene editing perk trees as well.
Used famous traditional Chinese medicine Baicalein to reduce pulmonary vascular resistance.
My first project. Spend an memorable summer vacation with 200 mice, administering drugs and measuring tumor size everyday.
Found my programming skills surprising useful in variable control & outcome prediction, and got started with some really cool …
Joined a pharmacology lab in my hometown for this unbelivable vacation. Finally found inner peace with imperfect WB result.
🦠 Confocal microscope img observing intracellular photothermal transduction.
🧪 Exp. ran by Yi, mentored by Dr Yong Cheng
In this work, we applied supramolecular-template-assisted stratge to fabricate nano yolk-shell structures. The idea is to wrap a plasmonic core in a dynamic polyphenol network, and fuse a second polyphenol shell on it. After template degradation, polyphenol shell creates a semi-soft cavity to host the core and additional cargos, while provides an highly-active interface to incoporate targeting peptide motifs. In this design, we integrated plasmonic (metal) and photosensitive (polyphenol) materials in a signle yolk-shell structure. Novolty of this partice includes tunable nanomechanical properties for enhanced photoacoustic imaging, photothermal transduction, and deep-tumor penetration.
Aromatic interactions are commonly involved in the assembly of naturally occurring building blocks, and these interactions can be replicated in an artificial setting to produce functional materials. Here we describe a colorimetric biosensor using co-assembly experiments with plasmonic gold and surfactant-like peptides (SLPs) spanning a wide range of aromatic residues, polar stretches, and interfacial affinities.
Using nanocrystals of insoluble drug as carriers, a carrier material-free platform was developed previously to deliver a second insoluble drug for codelivery. To extend the concept, we hypothesized, herein, that the platform allows for codelivery of hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs using a cocrystalization-like strategy.
The rapid spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has greatly disrupted the livelihood of many people around the world. To date, more than 35.16 million COVID-19 cases with 1.037million total deaths have been reported worldwide. Compared with China, where the disease was first reported, cases of COVID-19, the number of confirmed cases for the disease in the rest of the world have been incredibly high. Even though several dugs have been suggested to be used against the disease, the said interventions should be backed by empirical clinical evidence. Therefore, this paper provides a systematic review and a meta-analysis of efficacy and safety of different COVID-19 drugs.
MS in Nanoengineering @ UC San Diego
Prof. Donald Sirbuly
Prof. Jesse Jokerst
Prof. Darren Lipomi
Prof. Shaochen Chen
Prof. Joseph Wang
Prof. David Fenning
Prof. Shengqiang Cai
Prof. Lingyan Shi
Prof. Ekaterina Evdokimenko