Gene Kim Laboratory

Dr. Gene Kim is a professor of biomedical engineering in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California and completed his postdoctoral fellowship in cancer imaging at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the development of quantitative dynamic contrast-enhanced and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging methods for early detection of cancer and assessment of treatment response, particularly in breast cancer and head and neck cancer. Dr. Kim’s laboratory has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Seung Koo Lee is an assistant professor of cell biology research in Radiology Department at the Weill Cornell Medicine. He earned his Ph.D. in immunology from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. During his Ph.D. course, he studied the signaling mechanisms of vitamin C that control tumor proliferation, and apoptosis in colon cancer and melanoma. He then completed postdoctoral training at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, where he invented a layer-by-layer nanoplatform (LbLN) that delivers a short interfering RNA (siRNA) and imaging probe to various cancers. His research focuses on the development of, (1) innovative multi-functional molecular imaging probes for various disease states including cancers and, (2) drug delivery systems for diagnostic, therapeutic and clinical applications.

Myung-Shin (Cindy) Han holds a master's in Molecular Biology from Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul, Korea. After finishing her master’s, Cindy worked as a research manager in orthopedic surgery at Seoul National University Hospital, researching tumor immunity and stem-cell therapy with bone grafts. She had also served as a Research Assistant to research molecular optical imaging with tumor cell lines and animals for 5 years at the Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Houston, TX. Since 2013, she's worked at Weill Cornell Medicine. For over 20 years, Han has had myriad experiences in animal experiments, and her expertise extends to innovative nanomedicine for tumor imaging and therapy. She's also working with sprayable fluorogenic dyes for image-guided ovarian cancer surgery.

Sawwal Qayyum received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Ramapo College of New Jersey. During his undergraduate training, he spent his seminar year looking at embryogenesis-lethal genes in C. elegans using RNA interference (RNAi) and  clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 to visualize protein localization via green fluorescent (GFP) recombinant vectors. He previously worked at the New York University Langone Medical Center as a senior animal care technician, attaining there his laboratory animal technologist certification. He spent two years interning at the Preclinical Imaging Core headed by Dr. Wadghiri. There he became familiar with different modalities of optical imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and tumor pH probe design. In the Gene Kim lab, Sawwal is studying the effect of metronomic chemotherapy on the tumor vasculature and angiogenesis of orthotopic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and glioma mouse models using dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE)-MRI.

Miran Jang holds a bachelor’s and master’s in bio and brain engineering from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). Throughout her master's program, she developed an innovative microfluidics device for single-algal-cell cultivation. After completing her master’s degree, Miran joined the analytical team at Celltrion R&D Center, a leading biologics company. Her research expertise revolves around developing physical and chemical analysis assays for antibody biologics. She has experience developing antibody drugs, from early development to final approval. She has managed and led major BLA (Biologics License Applications) studies for biosimilars and a new drug.