Hyde Park, Chicago, IL—Wednesday evening, the one-year-old PME Innovation and Commercialization Fellowship Program (ICFP) officially announced its second class of fellows. Lu Li, Sarah MacEwan, Lambert Potin, and Jiajing Li have joined to help keep pace with the growing PME technology portfolio and expand ICFP's social presence around campus. The occasion was celebrated at dinner with PME Associate Dean Sharon Feng.
The ICFP is a student-led effort to facilitate commercialization at the school serving as a link between new discoveries and inventions, created in PME labs, and innovation organizations at the University of Chicago, and specifically addresses the challenges associated with commercializing University technology. In its first year, ICFP has helped lead two PME technologies into Polsky programming and assisted in the submission of nine invention disclosures to UChicago Tech, the University’s technology transfer office. The ICFP empowers graduate students and postdoctoral scholars affiliated with PME to interface with the UChicago innovation ecosystem. IC Fellows are a resource for PME, and will maintain an active portfolio of PME discoveries and intellectual property and act as ambassadors to organizations such as the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the Chicago Innovation Exchange, and UChicago Tech.
Jiajing Li received her BS in chemistry from Fudan University in 2014. Following graduation, she joined the inaugural class of the PhD program in molecular engineering at the University of Chicago. She is currently advised by Professor Paul Nealey, and her research focuses on DNA-directed assembly of plasmonic nanostructures.
Lu Li received her bachelor of engineering in polymer science and engineering from the Zhejiang University. Lu is currently a third-year PhD student at PME, and is advised by Professor Matthew Tirrell. Highly inspired by the innovative and entrepreneurial culture of PME, she works closely with faculty members and peers to organize technology portfolios, invention disclosures, and participating in the NSF I-Corps program. While her own research focuses mainly on polymer materials, she is also interested in biotechnology and quantum information.
Sarah MacEwan received a BS in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University and a PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University. Her work has focused on application-driven biomaterials research. As an undergraduate in the laboratory of Professor James Anderson, she explored the inflammatory reaction of macrophages to biomedical polymers. Her doctoral work in the laboratory of Professor Ashutosh Chilkoti focused on the development of recombinant stimulus-responsive materials for tumor-targeted drug delivery. As a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago in the laboratory of Professor Jeffrey Hubbell, she is now focused on the development of immunomodulatory materials that induce antigen-specific immune tolerance. Her current work aims to control immune responses to orally delivered antigen with potential applications in restoring antigen-specific immune tolerance in autoimmune conditions like celiac disease.
Lambert Potin received his bachelor and master degrees in life sciences and technology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne. During his undergraduate studies, he interned at Nestlé and EMD Serono, and he also served during one year in the Swiss military. In 2013, he started a PhD in bioengineering at EPFL in the group of Professor Melody Swartz, with whom he moved to the University of Chicago in 2014 to finish his graduate studies. His research interests include immunoengineering, tumor biology, and cancer immunotherapies.