YongTae “Tony” Kim
Assistant Professor
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN)
Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB)
Georgia Institute of Technology
Seminar Information
Nanomedicine is the medical application of nanotechnology for healthcare. Advanced treatment of major diseases such as cancer requires controlled targeted delivery of therapeutic and diagnostic (theranostic) nanomaterials. Despite the progress in the costly development of new theranostic nanomaterials, many cannot reach clinical trials. This challenge is partly due to the poor reproducibility of the therapeutic efficacy in scale-up production of these nanomaterials and partly due to the poor predictive validity of conventional in vitro screening platforms. To address these challenges, we develop (i) microvortex reactors that enable large-scale, highly reproducible production of multicomponent therapeutic nanomaterials and (ii) microengineered physiological systems that present cultured cells with controlled mechanical and biochemical cues with physiological relevance. This talk highlights our recent efforts toward engineered microfluidic systems for robust manufacturing of therapeutic nanomaterials and for the development of human blood-brain barrier in vitro models. Our ultimate vision is to leverage these technological innovations to enable cost-effective identification of new therapeutic targets for fatal diseases including atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and brain tumors.
Dr. Kim is an Assistant Professor of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to his current appointment, he was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Langer Laboratory of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. In 2011, he received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining Carnegie Mellon, he was a researcher in areas of controls and robotics at R&D Divisions of Hyundai-Kia Motors and Samsung Electronics for 6 years. He received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University. He has authored multidisciplinary research articles in major journals including PNAS, Nano Letters, ACS Nano, Nano Today, JACS, Biomaterials, PLoS ONE, Lab on a Chip, Bioconjugate Chemistry, Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, and IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. He won NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2017), NSF CAREER Award (2017), AHA National Scientist Development Grant Award (2015), and Coins for Alzheimer’s Research Trust Award (2015). He was selected as a distinguished panel speaker in multidisciplinary biomimetic engineering for the Annual Beckman Scholars and Young Investigators Symposium in 2014. He has filed over 20 patent applications worldwide including 9 US patents. He has consulted for several pharmaceutical and biomedical companies regarding manufacturing of drug-loaded nanoparticles and development of organ-on-a-chip systems.