Illinois Institute of Technology - Unlimiited Potential

Grad Student Research

A newsletter spotlighting the research of IIT Graduate Students

August 2009

Graduate student researchers at IIT make an important contribution to the scientific world. To bring attention to some of the outstanding graduate students within all IIT departments, the Graduate College is publishing a monthly newsletter spotlighting individual students and their research.

Previous Issues

Robert Dawe, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering is working in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Laboratory, headed by Dr. Konstantinos Arfanakis, using an MRI technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to study Alzheimer’s disease. This technique allows researchers to non-invasively measure the movement of water molecules within the brain. By observing the direction and speed at which the molecules move, it is possible to visualize the many nerve bundles that make up the white matter of the human brain.

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease is the formation of amyloid plaques, which are clumps of proteins found between brain cells. These plaques present a physical obstacle to the movement of water molecules, and the group believes that they can be detected through the use of DTI. To test this hypothesis, Dawe will be performing postmortem MRI brain scans. He will then compare the results of DTI to the number of amyloid plaques counted under a microscope. This type of comparison is not possible with living patients, since specimens must be dissected and viewed under a microscope immediately following the scan session.

He anticipates a strong relationship between the movement of water molecules within the postmortem brains, as measured with DTI, and the density of amyloid plaques, as observed under the microscope. Therefore, it might be possible to use DTI to non-invasively measure the density of plaques in living subjects. This would be an extremely important finding for two reasons. First, it would allow clinicians to detect Alzheimer’s at a very early stage of the disease, increasing the chance of effective treatment. Second, it would allow researchers to monitor the effectiveness of experimental treatments in real time. It is the hope of researchers in the MRI Laboratory that this could all be accomplished with a 20-minute scan session using conventional MRI scanners that already exist in hospitals around the world.

Hyun A. “Anna “ Song, a Ph.D. student in organic chemistry and the 2007-8 and 2008-9 Kilpatrick Fellowship recipient, has made significant contributions to the research programs in Dr. Joy Chong’s lab and has contributed to 9 research papers published in internationally renowned journals. In addition to gaining experience in organic synthesis, Anna has been involved in the characterization and chemical and biological evaluation of novel organic compounds using magnetic resonance (MR) relaxometer, Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and fluorescence microscopes, and cell culture techniques.

Anna is currently working under the guidance of Dr. Chong on interdisciplinary research projects aimed at developing safe, effective, and targeted drugs for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. These drugs can be applied to various therapeutic and diagnostic techniques, such as antibody-targeted radiation therapy (RIT), iron depletion therapy (IDT), and MRI, positron emission tomography (PET), and fluorescence imaging (FI). The goal is to generate cancer drugs to deliver the cytotoxic agents and/or imaging probes directly to the cancer cells without causing toxicity to healthy normal cells.

Xufei Mao, a doctoral candidate in the Computer Science Department has research interests that include the design and analysis of algorithms concerning wireless networks and network security. A current research topic of Mao’s is “top K” related (“K” stands for a particular value). In a typical wireless sensor network a number of wireless sensor nodes are deployed in a certain area. These sensor nodes can monitor the environment, collect interesting data, and send data to the sink node (or base station) by wireless communication. Mao is trying to determine how to quickly and accurately find the “top K” values among the data collected by all sensors under the constraint of wireless interference and the low power of each sensor node. Here "top K" has different definitions in different scenarios, such as “K” largest values, or “K” smallest values among all candidate data.

Another ongoing project that Mao is leading in the lab, is to construct a real test bed for a wireless sensor network. The team deployed 50 sensor nodes in the Computer Science Department, which are used for data collection, data aggregation, and so on. This wireless sensor network can be used to illustrate and improve their algorithms. They can also work on the lower layer of communication protocols of sensor nodes to improve the performance of the sensor nodes, such as fault tolerance ability and power-saving ability.

The current global enthusiasm for nanotechnology is an offshoot of several late 20th century advances. Particles in the nano-scale (10-9 meter) display unique and interesting properties due to their large surface-volume ratio compared to the bulk material. Nanoparticle research has potential applications in biomedical, optical, and electronic fields. Nanoparticles themselves can come in a variety of shapes; spheres and rods are the most frequently observed ones. Sudipto Chakraborty, a ChBE graduate student under the guidance of Dr. Victor Perez-Luna, is working in a laboratory with metallic nanoparticles, primarily gold, and is tuning them for a variety of applications. In a macroscopic sense, Chakraborty’s research delves into modifying the surface of gold nanoparticles, so they may have an impact in the area of biomedicine.

Surface modification requires placing application specific molecules at precise nano- scale distance on the surface of the particles. Chakraborty, along with other researchers is trying to attach a “thermoresponsive” polymer chain onto the surface of a gold nanoparticle. Thermoresponsive polymers undergo chain expansion and contraction with changes in temperature. These polymers when attached to gold surfaces can cause the nanoparticles to aggregate and disperse by virtue of their chain contraction and expansion. The polymer-metal core hybrid system can have applications in biosensing and drug delivery. In the future he plans to incorporate a second layer of polymer chain, which can contain therapeutic drugs, and the composite can act as a targeted drug delivery system. This system can be effective in the treatment of tumors which require the release of drugs in specific locations. Furthermore, the system can be engineered to transport different types of drugs to provide more control when battling diseases. The system can act as a sensing device by analyzing the response to various antibodies, enzymes, or biomolecules attached to the gold nanoparticle surface. The hybrid system is promising as it is benign to human cells, simple in develop, inexpensive, and can be tailored to address other applications.