Lab Members
Graduate Students
- Jason Albert
Jason received his B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University in 2016 and immediately joined the Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences program at the University of Michigan. As a student in the Schwendeman Lab, Jason’s work focuses on developing a intravitreal PLGA ocular implant for the controlled release Norrin and atypical protein kinase C inhibitor for the treatment of macular edema. He also works on release mechanisms of contraceptive hormones through polymeric thin films.
- King Yeung (Justin) Hong
Justin received his B.S. in Chemical Biology from the University of California - Berkeley, in 2014, where his research focused on studying the therapeutic role of exosomes. Upon graduation, he worked as a chemist at a pharmaceutical company, developing analytical methods for microneedle-based drug delivery system. He joined the Schwendeman Lab in 2016 and has been working on a project to study peptide-polymer interactions in PLGA microspheres.
- Jenna Walker
Jenna Walker received her B.S. in Biochemistry from Purdue University in 2015 where her research involved organic chemistry methodology development for pancreatic cancer drug molecules. She joined the Schwendeman Lab in 2016 where her research focuses on PLGA implants for the controlled release of immune checkpoint inhibitors for the treatment of glioblastoma, as well as studying the mechanism of PLGA coating for controlling continuous drug release from various polymer drug delivery systems.
Post-Docs
- Avital Beig
- Gergely Lautner
Gergely received his M.S. degree in Chemical Engineering (2007) and Ph.D. in Chemistry (2013) from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, where he worked on developing artificial receptor (i.e., aptamer, peptide nucleic acid and molecularly imprinted polymer) based sensors for virus, protein and miRNA detection.
He joined the Schwendeman and Meyerhoff Labs as a joint postdoc researcher in 2014. His recent research is focusing on controlled delivery and potential therapeutic applications of nitric oxide, an extremely potent signaling molecule which plays an important role in many physiological processes in the human body.
Email: [email protected]
- Nianqiu Shi
Nianqiu received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Pharmaceutical Engineering and Pharmaceutics from Shenyang Pharmaceutical University (China) in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree in Pharmaceutics from Peking University (China) in 2012. He served as a researcher in Tianjin Institute of Pharmaceutical Research (China) from 2012 to 2013, and completed his postdoctoral training in Jilin University (China) from 2014 to 2017. His research focused on the development of cell-penetrating peptide-based drug delivery using conjugate and liposome platforms for cancer therapy, and also focused on supersaturable drug delivery systems (amorphous formulations) and drug crystallization in industrial pharmaceutics fields. He joined the Schwendeman Lab in 2017 as a postdoctoral research fellow, where he focuses on the development of PLGA microsphere formulations for long-acting controlled release.
- Jie Tang
Jie received her B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the West China School of Pharmacy from Sichuan University in 2009 and 2014, respectively. Her Ph.D. research focused on the development of surface modified liposomes for tumor targeted drug delivery. She joined the Schwendeman Lab in 2016 as a postdoctoral research fellow, and has been working on developing injectable PLGA/PLA microneedle patches for the sustained release of contraceptive hormones.
Lab Managers
