Grad student Kilho Lee takes first prize at Healthcare Symposium

Following up on last year's first-prize win in the Hayes Graduate Research Forum sponsored by the Office of Research, the Graduate School, and the Council of Graduate Students, Kilho Lee swept first place in another competition this year - the Second Annual Engineering Healthcare Industry and Research Symposium hosted by Ohio State's Biomedical Engineering Society and Biomedical Engineering Graduate Student Association.

Lee's poster presentation, "Scalable Nanocomposite Synthesis via Liquid-Liquid Electrospray," detailed his work in scalable nanomanufacturing. Lee and his team are developing novel technology to synthesize micellar nanocomposites - polymer aggregates that encapsulate nanoparticles with unique properties at the core in order to package nanoparticles of different functionalities for the purpose of targeting cancer cells. 

The technology used to produce them is called Liquid-Liquid Electrospray (LLE). The LLE electrospray techniques widely used in aerosol science enable synthesis in a surfactant-free environment in a manner that is semi-continuous and tunable (high throughput with better controllability of the overall process).

Lee's group believes that LLE is the first surfactant-free synthesis route among emulsion-based nanocomposite formation. Recently, LLE-synthesized nanocomposites have been characterized, and this demonstrates the feasibility of achieving quality, high-throughput synthesis. 

Judges included faculty from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and industry representatives. Lee's advisors are Jessica Winter and Barbara Wyslouzil.