STAFF SCIENTISTS

Lei Zhu, PhD
– Associate Scientist

Dr. Zhu pursued his PhD studies at Jilin University under the supervision of Prof. Xuexun Fang. During this period, he did a two-year China Scholarship Council (CSC) Fellowship at the Laboratory of Molecular Imaging and Nanomedicine (LOMIN) of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), Bethesda, MD. After receiving his PhD at Jilin in 2011, he returned to LOMIN as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2012, he was appointed to a faculty position at Xiamen University. Dr. Zhu is interested in screening and selecting cancer-specific binding peptides; developing novel activatable probes for non-invasive early detection; and monitoring cancer therapy using multimodality imaging technologies including PET/SPECT, MRI, and photoacoustic and optical imaging. His current, primary project is the development of multi-modality imaging guided drug delivery platforms for cancer theranositcs in vivo.

Wei Ping Qian, MD
– Research Associate

Dr. Qian received his MD from Henan Medical University, Zhengzhou, China, in 1985. After working as an attending physician in otorhinolaryngology at the Affiliated Hospital of Luoyang Medical School, China, he attended Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in 1998 and received research training in pathology. He came to Emory University in 2001 and worked as a research associate in the Division of Endocrinology, followed by the Department of Urology. Dr. Qian joined Dr. Yang's laboratory in 2010. His research projects focus on the development of novel animal tumor models for evaluation of the effect of targeted theranostic nanoparticles for image-guided cancer therapy.

Tongrui Liu
– Senior Research Specialist

Tongrui Liu has been working in the field of breast cancer research for ten years. Her current research projects include developing and evaluating tumor targeted nanoparticles in drug delivery, establishing animal tumor models, and using an optical imaging approach to monitor therapeutic response.

Siobhan M. Eze
– Lead Research Specialist

Siobhan Eze minored in chemistry and received her BA in biology at the University of Great Falls in Montana in 2010. She then obtained her MS in cell and molecular biology at Appalachian State University in 2012. She joined Dr. Yang's research laboratory in 2015.

SURGICAL ONCOLOGY POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

Hongyu Zhou, PhD

Dr. Zhou received his PhD in medicinal chemistry from Shandong University, China, in 2009. He was a postdoctoral researcher from 2009-2012 in the Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. He joined the Emory Surgical Oncology Nanomedicine Laboratory in 2012. His research concentrates on the development of novel nanoparticle-based drug delivery systems for targeted cancer therapy and imaging.

Ning Gao, MD

Dr. Gao received her MD degree in microbial and biochemical pharmaceutics at Peking Union Medical College, China, in 2011. She is engaged in preclinical studies of targeted theranostic nanoparticles with the goal of early clinical translation.

Erica Bozeman, PhD

Dr. Bozeman is a third year post-doctoral research fellow in the laboratory. Her primary research interests are the assessment of the immunological correlates of protection following targeted nanoparticle treatments in pancreatic and breast cancer models and the development of novel nanoparticles carrying immune modulators. Dr. Bozeman is the current recipient of multiple fellowships, including an NRSA F32 and UNCF/Merck and FACES post-doctoral science fellowships.

GRADUATE STUDENTS

Jasmine Miller-Kleinhenz

Jasmine Miller-Kleinhenz is a 5th year graduate student in the laboratory. She received her BS and MS at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before enrolling in the Cancer Biology PhD program at Emory University in 2011. Her principal research focus is elucidating mechanisms for drug resistance in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and defining the role cancer stem cells play in this resistance. She is also interested in developing novel nanoparticles to overcome drug resistance in TNBC. During the course of her PhD work she has received the William and Catherine Rice Endowed Research Award and an On Recent Discoveries by Emory Researchers (ORDER) Fellowship. She is also enrolled in the Med Into Grad Certificate Program in Translational Research of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Christina Ward

Christina Ward joined the lab in 2013 and is currently a PhD candidate in cancer biology. Her research is concerned with identifying changes in macrophage amount, type, and location in the tumor microenvironment following nanoparticle treatment and whether these changes correlate with a therapeutic response.

Bridgette Peake

Bridgette Peake is a PhD graduate student in Emory's Molecular Systems and Pharmacology program. She received her BS at Michigan State University in 2006 and her MS at Western Illinois University in 2010.

Eduardo Sanabria-Figueroa

Eduardo Sanabria-Figueroa is also a PhD candidate in Emory's Molecular and Systems Pharmacology program. He obtained his BS at the University of Puerto Rico in Aguadilla in 2011.

Wei Chen

Wei Chen is a visiting scholar and PhD student from Sun Yat-sen University in Southern China. He joined the Emory Surgical Oncology Nanomedicine Lab in 2014 for translational research training. His research interests include developing theranostic nanoparticles to deliver toxins, nucleotides, and peptides for cancer treatment. He also plans to investigate dissecting genomics for cancer classification, tumor biomarker identification, and personalized cancer therapy.

Zhiyang Zhou

Zhiyang Zhou is a visiting student from China. In contribution to the lab's focus on targeted theranostic nanoparticles, Zhiyang is comparing the efficacy of different targeting ligands.