Assistant Professor
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 1400 J. R. Lynch Street, P.O. Box 17910Jackson, MS 39217-0510
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Teaching
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| General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Polymer Chemistry | ||
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Project 1: Design, synthesis and characterization of multifunctional small molecules and polymers for surface functionalization. To a very large extent, the surface properties of solid materials dictate their properties in the final application. The covalent immobilization of bioactive compounds onto solid surface has seen rapid growth in the past decade in such as biomedical, textiles, microelectronics, bioprocessing and food packaging. While the method of surface functionalization varies with each application, development of multifunctional linkers gain great attention. Its advantages include high specificity, nearly quantitative with mild ambient condition and simple workflow. By using multifunctional small molecules or polymers, surface functionalization can be done in one step with high fidelity.
Figure 1. Synthesis of bifunctional silane and application for manufacture of peptide microarray Project 2: Development of organic, inorganic and organic-inorganic hybrid nanomaterials with controlled sizes and functions by green chemistry Due to small size, nanomaterials are found to show unusual properties comparing to their counterparts in bulk. There are great interests to develop new schemes to prepare functional nanoparticles, hybrid nanostruction and assemblies with appealing optical properties for a wide range of application. One example is the synthesis of ultrasmall gold nanoclusters with fluorescent emission using green chemistry. The other example is synthesis of nanoparticles with near-IR absorptions.
Project 3: Application of bioconjugation / nanomaterials as chemical tools for sensing, imaging, diagnostics and therapy of human diseases like cancer. The multifunctional properties of nanoparticles provide unique advantages for the specific delivery of imaging and therapeutic agents. Several ligands with sensing, imaging, diagnostics and therapy can be incorporated across the large nanoparticle surface area in a single nanoparticles system. Compare to small molecule ligands, nanomaterials can convey three benefits: a) Nanoparticles tend to accumulate in tumor tissue much more than they do in normal tissues through the enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect. b) Multivalent targeting significantly increases the binding affinity of a particle toward a target cell. c) Nanoparticle increase the blood circulation time by avoiding renal excretion. I am going to develop new chemical tools to tackle current problems in biomedical research which is otherwise inaccessible using traditional biological techniques.
Figure 3. Gold-copper alloy nanoparticles for imaging |
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