Current Members

Yi-Chien Wu is a Ph.D. student in the department of pharmaceutical science. She completed her bachelor’s and master’s degree in biochemical science and technology from National Taiwan University. In her bachelor year, she has worked in Taiwan Liposome Company as an intern and participated in the project on the optimization of doxorubicin liposome. In her master’s, she focused her research studies on the development of lipid-based drug delivery formulation for pancreatic cancer treatment. Currently, in the lab, she is working on the project about spatial omics techniques for the study of the tumor microenvironment. She is also working on projects related to advancing the T3 platform for lung and for conducting cyclic immunofluorescent staining on the tumor.

Dahee Jung is a PhD student in Pharmaceutical Sciences. She got her B.S. in Nutritional Science from Ewha Womans University and M.S in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the same university. During her master’s, she focused on PK/PD research on nanoparticle drugs. She worked as a researcher at a pharmaceutical company for a year before joining the UIC PSCI graduate program in 2020.

Elie Abi Khalil is a PhD student in the Pharmaceutical Sciences department. He previously completed his BS and MS degrees in Biological Sciences at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon. During his bachelor’s, he worked on identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with coronary artery disease and then shifted his research focus to the molecular mechanisms underlying glioblastoma multiforme when he began his master’s. Currently, he wants to further his knowledge of cancer by investigating the tumor microenvironment using spatial omic techniques as well as delve into the world of drug delivery for the purpose of advancing cancer therapeutics.

Xiaoying Cai is a PhD student in the Pharmaceutical Sciences department. She previously completed her BS and MS degrees, majoring in Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics at the Chongqing Medical University in Chongqing, China. During her master’s, she worked on developing biosensors based on collateral cleavage of CRISPR/Cas12a for detecting cancer-associated antigens for more sensitive and specific cancer diagnosis and also evaluated the effectiveness of aptamers on the peptide of cell membranes for cancer therapy and diagnosis. Currently, she is working on the development of novel cancer vaccine delivery systems for advanced personalized cancer immunotherapy.

Dylan Schwartz is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He previously completed his B.S. in Biochemistry and B.A. in Philosophy from Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ, where he worked on developing novel peptide-based therapeutics to target multidrug resistant microorganisms and metastatic cancers. He has also worked as an intern in the biotechnology industry as an in/ex-vivo pharmacologist, primarily conducting PK/PD studies. Presently, Dylan is working on utilizing the lab’s confocal microscopy photobleaching-based spatial multi-omics platform for human tissue samples to better understand the tumor microenvironment. 

Ziye Wan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences. She previously completed her B.S. in Biochemistry and Pharmacology from China Pharmaceutical University and my master’s degree in Integrative Pharmacy (Pharmaceutical Science) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she worked on translating STING-activating cyclic dinucleotide-manganese nanoparticle via lipid layer engineering and also worked on hydrogel modulation of gut microbiota. Presently, she is working on antibody engineering and immunotherapy.

Jeonghun Yoo is currently a third year PharmD student at UIC college of pharmacy department and joined the Lee (Steve) lab in May 2024. He has completed his pre-pharmacy from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. He works on experiment regarding microfludics-based immunotherapy screening with core needle biopsy.