May 22nd, 2026 - Congratulations to Holly!
Holly has defended her Master's thesis (Plan A). Congrats for the nice work well done! Many thanks to the Committee - Dr. Ron Siegel, Dr. Wei Shen!
May 15th, 2026 - Spring Celebration!
A beautiful Spring evening on the patio of Stub and Herbs - (left to right) Holly, Madeline, Isabel, Reese, Sydney, Poorva, Sandra, Elli, Luya, Dr. Wang
January 2nd, 2026 - Happy New Year!
We are super excited to welcome two new lab members - Elli Hosokawa and Poorva Halbe, first-year students in the BME PhD program. Elli graduated with a BS degree in BME from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 2023. Since then, she worked as a full-time Research Specialist I in Therapeutics R&D group at FUJIFILM Cellular Dynamics where she performed and optimized experiments with iPSC-derived cell therapies, ran assays, documented and presented data, and wrote technical reports. Poorva has a BS (2023) and a MS degree (2024) in BME from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She held a full-time research position at the Waisman Center and the Bhattacharyya Lab, where she used trisomy 21 iPSCs to study Down syndrome cortical development and Imaris to analyze and quantify confocal images. Elli and Poorva will be co-advised by Dr. Wang and Dr. Brenda Ogle.
December 13th, 2025
Winter holiday party at Sally's! Left to right: Poorva, Sydney, Holly, Isabel, Sandra, Luya, Elli, Dr. Wang.
October 21-22, 2025
At this year's MD&M Midwest Conference, our lab presented posters at the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) Medical Polymers Session. Sandra Shahriar presented her work on "A novel biodegradable liquid polymer excipient for a shared neoantigen melanoma vaccine" and Holly (Xiaoyu) Tian presented her work on "Nanodroplet-infused Mucoadhesive Polymer Wafers: Mechanical Characterization and Preliminary Drug Release Studies".
September 8, 2025
Welcome the return of Sydney Haubenstricker, who is staying with our lab to continue her research for a Master's degree. Sydney will investigate the structure-property relationship of CAPRO-based nanocomposites. Welcome Luya Wei to our lab. Luya did his undergraduate study at UCSD and will pursue a Plan A Master's degree in BME. Luya will develop synthetic membranolytic polymers as potential anticancer agents and investigate their mechanism in inducing immunogenic cell death.
August 7, 2025
Airam J. Rivera-Torres, a rising junior from the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao, has completed a summer research experience funded by the University of Minnesota Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). At the Summer Undergraduate Research Expo today Airam presented a poster titled "Characterization of Polymer Degradation for Controlled Peptide Release in Melanoma Vaccine Development". Sandra Shahriar served as Airam's mentor on the project.
July 14 - 18, 2025
Dr. Wang and Sandra attended the 2025 Controlled Release Society (CRS) Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Sandra presented a poster titled "A Shared Neoantigen Melanoma Vaccine Formulated with a Novel Biodegradable Liquid Polymer: in vitro and in vivo Evaluation" - an NCI-funded translational project with collaborators from the Mayo Clinic (the Block lab) and the UMN (Sury and Gurvich labs). Dr. Wang co-chaired a session on "Nanomedicine and nanoscale delivery (focus: skin/mucosal delivery)".
January 24, 2025
Sandra Shahriar has been awarded an Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship (IDF) by the Graduate School for the 2025-26 academic year. Only ~1/4 of the nominees are awarded. Congratulations Sandra!
January 19, 2025
Marcus Flowers has published another research article as lead author in the open-access journal of Pharmaceutics titled "Alginate Hydrogel Beads with a Leakproof Gold Shell for Ultrasound-Triggered Release". The project was led by Marcus Flowers with significant contributions from Alex Paulsen (former BME undergraduate student) in collaboration with Claire Kaiser, Adam Tuma, Prof. Hubert Lim, and Prof. Brenda Ogle. Congratulations to the team!
January 6, 2025
A collaborative study on "Whey Protein-Based Hydrogel Microspheres for Endovascular Embolization" has just been published in ACS Applied Bio Materials. This project was led by Dr. Chen Guo (Radiology, UMN; now with Boston Scientific). Congrats to everyone on the team, in particular Marcus Flowers and Amanda Billups in our lab, for their contributions!
November 22, 2024
Marcus Flowers has defended successfully his PhD dissertation titled "Endogenous and Exogenous Stimuli-Responsive Polymer Systems for Spatially and Temporally Controlled Drug Delivery". Congratulations, Dr. Flowers!
October 27, 2024
Marcus Flowers has published his first research article as lead author in the open-access journal of Pharmaceutics titled "A Novel Poly(ε-Caprolactone)-Based Photo-Crosslinkable Liquid Copolymer as a Versatile Drug Delivery Platform". Coauthors include Dr. Wang, Dr. Brenda Ogle and two BME undergraduate students Nicole Mertens and Amanda Billups who made significant contributions to this study. Congratulations to Marcus and the team!
October 16, 2024
The Advanced Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) conference took place at the Minneapolis Convention Center today. Our group participated in the session on Medical Plastics MINITEC organized by the Society of Plastics Engineers. Dr. Wang gave an invited talk on Mucoadhesive Wafers for Vaccine Delivery. Marcus and Sandra presented their work and won poster awards - Congratulations!
August 8, 2024
Conner McClelland (University of Kansas) and Zane Scott (UT Austin) have completed their summer research in our lab and presented their results at the University's Undergraduate Research Symposium. Congrats on your hard work and accomplishments! Good luck with your future graduate careers!
August 5, 2024
Prof. Wang attended the 2024 Drug Carriers in Medicine and Biology Gordon Research Conference (GRC) in Portland, Maine.
July 8, 2024
Prof. Wang attended the Controlled Release Society (CRS) Annual Conference in Bologna, Italy, and presented the work by our former lab members Dr. Wenshou Wang and Karen Grinnen titled "Controlled Release of Vaccines from a Hydrophobic Liquid Polymer Depot Induces Long-lasting Antigen-specific Humoral and Cellular Immune Responses".
June 14, 2024
Riddhi Vivek Kini has passed the final oral exam with her presentation titled "Nanocomposite Hydrogels for Drug Delivery". Congratulations, Riddhi, for earning a Master's degree in Pharmaceutics!
May 30, 2024
Marcus and Sandra visited Boston Scientific Corp. at their Maple Grove campus and each presented posters.
May 29, 2024
IPRIME (Industrial Partnership for Research in Interfacial and Materials Engineering), an academic/industry Consortium based in the College of Science and Engineering, UMN, held its Annual Meeting. Prof. Wang, the faculty lead of the Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Materials (BPM) group within IPRIME, moderated the half-day program review and presented our recent work on the novel CAPRO polymers. Marcus and Sandra each presented posters on their work.
May 7, 2024
Kanica Aggarwal has passed the final presentation of her Plan B Master's project on "Extended Release of Polymer-formulated Pain Analgesic". Congratulations, Kanica, for earning a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering!
Feb. 5-7, 2024
Sandra Shahriar attended the MiniTec' at Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) West annual meeting in Anaheim, California, where she presented a poster titled "Physicochemical Characterization of a Viscous Polymer Blend as an Injectable Drug Delivery System". Co-authors include former Wang Lab postdoc Anasuya Sahoo, now working at Henkel, and current Wang Lab undergrad Sydney Haubenstricker.
November 10, 2023
Prof. Chun Wang visited the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and gave a seminar on "Polymers for vaccine delivery" at their Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.
October 11-14, 2023
Marcus Flowers traveled to Seattle to attend the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting, where he presented a poster titled "3D-Printable, Solvent-free Macromer with Tunable, pH-sensitive Degradation for Flexible Drug Delivery". Co-authors include Nicole Mertens, Amanda Billups, both Wang lab undergrads, and Prof. Brenda Ogle.
August 21, 2023
Sandra Shahriar passed the Written and Oral Preliminary Exam and is now officially a PhD candidate. Congratulations Sandra!
July 24-27, 2023
Prof. Chun Wang traveled to Las Vegas to attend the Controlled Release Society Annual Meeting.
May 31, 2023
At the Industrial Partnership for Research in Interfacial and Materials Engineering (IPRIME) Annual Meeting Marcus Flowers presented to the Biomedical Pharmaceutical Materials (BPM) group an update on our work on "Biodegradable Liquid Polymers".
April 25, 2023
Two of our super undergrads have presented posters at the Undergraduate Research Symposium -
Amanda Billups, "Evaluation of Cytocompatibility and Drug Release Kinetics of Whey Protein Microspheres for Trans-arterial Chemoembolization"
Sydney Haubenstricker, "Physicochemical Characterization of a Viscous Polymer Blend as an Injectable Drug Delivery System"
March 21, 2023
"The sky is the limit!" - featuring Marcus!
October 28, 2022
Prof. Chun Wang gave an invited talk on Poly(ortho esters) at The Globalisation of Pharmaceutics Education Network (GPEN) conference in Minneapolis.
September 18, 2022
"Mini' Wang lab retreat - happy people (L-R: Marcus, Chris, Jaob, Alex, Dr. Wang, Riddhi, Mandy, Sandra), sharing food and snacks, cool stories, lab history and future.
May 11, 2023
Brandon Onochie, an undergraduate student from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and a participant of the UMN Lif
August 11, 2022
Brandon Onochie, an undergraduate student from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) and a participant of the UMN Life Sciences Summer Undergraduate Research Program (LSSURP), presented his research work done over the summer in a poster titled "Polymer Microemulsions For the Delivery of Poorly Soluble Drugs to Human Pancreatic Cancer Cells". Brandon was supervised by Marcus Flowers.
April 13, 2022
Two of our "super-undergraduates" presented posters at the annual University of Minnesota Undergraduate Research Symposium - in person!
Mia Tran, "Nanocomposite Hydrogels for Drug Delivery"
Jacob Kotzenmacher, "Microfluidic Fabrication of Polymer Microcapsules for Small-molecule Drug Delivery"
Nice work, Mia and Jacob!
March 14, 2022
The UMN BME-Industry Grand Rounds featured Marcus Flowers and Prof. Chun Wang along with speakers from 3M to discuss "Materials and devices for wound healing and therapeutic delivery". Marcus and Dr. Wang shared our recent research work on "CAPRO: A novel biodegradable material for drug delivery" and "Polymer wafers for noninvasive delivery of protein vaccines".
January 2, 2022
Anasuya Sahoo, PhD, is joining our lab as a Postdoctoal Associate. Anasuya has extensive experience and accomplishment in pharmaceutical polymers - their characterization and use to improve drug formulation and delivery. Welcome Anasuya!
December 10, 2021
Two of our "super-undergraduates" presented posters at the annual University of Minnesota Undergraduate Research Symposium.
Alex Paulsen, "Fabrication of Gold Plated Alginate Microbeads"
Amanda Billups, "A Synthetic Oncolytic Polymer Induces Immunogenic Death of Pancreatic Cancer Cells in vitro"
Congrats, Mandy and Alex!
November 23, 2021
Sandra Shahriar is joining our lab as a BME PhD student. Sandra is supported by a 3-year CSE Graduate Fellowship. Welcome Sandra!
October 19, 2021
Prof. Chun Wang gave a College of Science and Engineering Public Lecture. The talk, titled "Polymers can do wonders: From vaccine delivery to cancer therapy", can be viewed on YouTube.
September 1, 2021
The amphiphilic nanodroplet-forming liquid polymer known as PA11, developed in our lab, has been incorporated into a hydrogel coating of fibrous neural electrode for delivery of poorly water-soluble molecules to neuronal cells in vitro and in vivo. This work was done in the lab of Dr. Polina Anikeeva at MIT and led by her graduate student Anthony Tabet, a former undergraduate researcher in the Wang lab and UMN chemical engineering alumni. Dr. Sam Hanson, co-author and Wang lab alumni, synthesized the PA11 polymer. The paper is published in ACS Central Science. Congratulations to Anthony, Sam, and all the collaborators!
May 28, 2021
Congratulations to Marcus Flowers for being awarded a Stem Cell Institute Predoctoral INFUSE Award. The main goal of the award program is to build a community of graduate students who are interested in stem cell biology and the potential of stem cells for future regenerative therapeutics. The program is intended to infuse new creative insight and intellectual energy into doctoral research projects while also providing advanced professional training.
May 26, 2021
Our research on "polymer wafers" for vaccine preservation and delivery has attracted media attention. See the UMN news release, a segment aired on KARE11 (also on Youtube), and a story aired on KSTP (Channel 5).
May 24, 2021
Our paper titled "Combination of irreversible electroporation with sustained release of a synthetic membranolytic polymer for enhanced cancer cell killing" has just been published in Scientific Reports. This project was led by Sam Hanson, our former PhD student, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Forsyth at Boston Scientific Corp. Congratulations!
Apr 27, 2021
Our paper on the amphiphilic liquid polymer PA11 has just been published in ACS Applied Bio Materials. The paper titled "Polymer-Based Dual-Responsive Self-Emulsifying Nanodroplets as Potential Carriers for Poorly Soluble Drugs" is a joint effort between our lab (Dr. Wenshou Wang, Anthony Tabet, Sam Hanson) and Dr. Dunwan Zhu (Wang lab alumni, now a Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences). Congratulations!
Feb 24, 2021
Sam Hanson has defended successfully his PhD dissertation today. He will be joining Boston Scientific Corp. Congratulations Dr. Hanson!
Dec 20, 2020
Sam Hanson's paper "Mucoadhesive wafers composed of binary polymer blends for sublingual delivery and preservation of protein vaccines" has just been published in the Journal of Controlled Release. This work is a collaboration with the labs of Dr. Jagan Sastry (MD Anderson Cancer Center) and Dr. Mike Barry (Mayo Clinic). Congratulations!
May 19, 2020
Kevin Ortiz-Rivera has defended successfully his PhD dissertation today. He will be joining AbbVie in Worcester, MA. Congratulations Dr. Ortiz-Rivera!