Intern projects

Dr Hao Song : Exploring the immunogenicity of mRNA nano-vaccines

Supervisor: Dr Hao Song
Contact: h.song6@uq.edu.au

Description

Dive into the cutting-edge science behind modern vaccines! This hands-on project involves creating the next generation of mRNA lipid nanoparticles (LNPs)—the same technology used in COVID-19 vaccines. You'll learn to formulate these tiny ""nano-capsules"" and then investigate the thrilling part: how they interact with immune cells. We'll unlock how their design triggers a powerful immune response, aiming to design super-efficient vaccines from the ground up. This is your chance to directly contribute to the future of medicine and see immunology and nanotechnology in action.

A/Prof Ruirui Qiao : Magnetically Guided Nanorobots for Targeted Therapeutics

Supervisor: A/Prof Ruirui Qiao
Contact: r.qiao@uq.edu.au

Description

Precision medicine aims to deliver therapeutic agents directly to diseased tissues while minimising off-target toxicity. Recent advances in nanotechnology have enabled the development of magnetically responsive nanoscale systems—often termed “nanorobots”—that can be externally guided and triggered for controlled drug release.This project will focus on the design and preliminary evaluation of magnetically actuated nanomaterial-based systems for targeted drug delivery applications.

Prof Chengzhong (Michael) Yu : Developing Nanomedicine to Enable Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Cancer Therapy

Supervisor: Prof Chengzhong (Michael) Yu
Contact: c.yu@uq.edu.au

Description

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most dangerous form of breast cancer and difficult to treat by conventional methods. Despite the promise of immunotherapy such as immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) as a potential treatment option for TNBC, its efficacy is limited. This project aims to develop a novel nano-adjuvant to improve ICI treatment outcome for TNBC. The novel nano-adjuvant is expected to provide improved outcome in the treatment of TNBC in combination with ICI.

Dr Yusra Rabbani : Selective plasmonic chemical sensors for national security and health applications

Supervisor: Dr Yusra Rabbani
Contact: y.rabbani@uq.edu.au

Description

Selective chemical sensors have a crucial role to play in numerous sectors that include the detection of chemical warfare agents for national security and the detection of biochemical markers of disease in healthcare settings. A key challenge for detecting and quantifying chemical species of interest in these applications is detecting trace amounts of chemicals in a complex real-world mixture – a chemical ‘needle in the haystack’. This project seeks to design plasmonic chemical sensors based on assemblies of gold nanoparticles with controlled morphologies, which are designed to selectively interact with and detect chemical warfare agents for rapid assessment of terrorism risk or biochemical markers of cancer for early detection