Undergrad's research career off to a great start

It might be "all in the family" for undergraduate Ivan Susin-Pires, whose parents are graduates of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences and are faculty members at the University of São Paulo, Brazil -- but that doesn't mean it isn't still a lot of hard work. So far for Ivan, however, his efforts are yielding excellent dividends: a promising start to an outstanding career in research.

Ivan was recently one of eight undergraduates who represented Ohio State in October 2017 at the 25th Annual SIICUSP Undergraduate Research Meeting in São Paulo, where he and the group had a chance to visit with his parents at the University of São Paulo.

Last year he won an Undergraduate Research Office Summer Research Fellowship which supported his research full time for the summer, and last spring he earned first place at the College of Engineering Undergraduate Research Forum.

Ivan is currently conducting research with the support of a Pelotonia Fellowship provided by Pelotonia, an annual Columbus cycling event founded in 2008 which has raised more than $130 million to fund cancer research at The Ohio State University.

Ivan was one of three CBE students to win a Pelotonia fellowship. This was out of a total of 42 students university-wide who also won. The fellowships provide undergraduates a year of research support and two years for graduate students.

"I have always wanted to be part of this effort to end cancer," Ivan said. He is using using a protein called apohemoglobin (apoHb) as a drug carrier to deliver photosensitizer molecules to cancerous cells in an effort to improve photodynamic theraphy (PDT) for targeted treatment of triple-negative breast cancer.