Lucas Akin awarded 2019 Beckman Institute Graduate Fellowship

Date
05/03/19

Lucas Akin was one of seven graduate students who were chosen to receive the 2019 Beckman Institute Graduate Fellowships. The program offers University of Illinois graduate students at the M.A., M.S., or Ph.D. level the opportunity to pursue interdisciplinary research at the institute.

Lucas Akin, Ph.D. student in the Chan group, will continue his research on the development of a nanoscale contrast platform through his project titled “An Ultrasound Contrast Agent Platform for Disease-responsive Image Enhancement.” This platform offers many improvements to current systems — navigation and localization beyond the primary circulation, disease-specific signal enhancement, and drug delivery — all through small molecule or enzymatic stimulation. Goals of the research include demonstrating in vivo efficacy of the nanoparticles to provide selective contrast in the presence of cancerous tumors along with demonstrating their ability to simultaneously deliver drug cargo and visualize tissue response in vivo. Akin plans to continue his collaboration with Michael Oelze, electrical and computer engineering, in addition to evaluating his contrast agents in vivo with the support of Wawrzyniec Dobrucki, bioengineering.

Complete list of winners.

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