Hyde Park, Chicago, IL—Tuesday evening, the newly created PME Innovation and Commercialization Fellowship Program (ICFP) officially announced that Kevin Miao and John Barrett will be inaugural fellows marking a milestone for the three-month-old program. Joining founders John Colson and Yu Kambe, the four fellows will immediately begin work on PME’s new technology portfolio. The occasion was celebrated with a 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. 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 discoveries and intellectual property and act as ambassadors to organizations such as the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (through the Booth school), the Chicago Innovation Exchange, and UChicagoTech, the University’s technology transfer office.
John Barrett received his BS in biomedical engineering with a concentration in nanotechnology from Boston University in spring 2013. He is working toward his PhD in biophysical sciences at the University of Chicago under the dual mentorship of Professor Matt Tirrell and Professor Joel Collier. As an undergraduate, John worked with Professor Hatice Altug to develop a multiplexing plasmonic biosensor integrated with a microfluidic device to quickly and cheaply detect the adsorption of proteins and viruses in a label-free manner. His current research aims to study and characterize a potential peptide amphiphile micelle vaccine against Group A Streptococcus. His research interests broadly include biomaterials, synthetic vaccines, immunoengineering, and drug development.
Kevin Miao is a PhD candidate at PME at the University of Chicago. He received his BA in physics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 2013. There, he worked with Professor Chandrasekhar Ramanathan on NMR probe design and novel probe geometries. Shortly thereafter, Kevin joined Renesys Corporation in a data research and software engineering role. In 2014, he joined Ocrolus, a New York-based startup specializing in automating the Medicaid application and validation process. Kevin is currently advised by Professor David Awschalom, and his research interests include devices utilizing quantum phenomena and quantum sensing within the realm of biomedical engineering.