News

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BMES 2025 in San Diego

October 11, 2025 - by Ester
Jason, Yazmin, and Akash present at BMES.
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Kwon Lab presents at SFB 2023, San Diego

April 20, 2023 - by Ester
Rebecca, Marianne, Katelyn, and Jason didn't have to travel far to present their oral platforms at SFB!
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Congraulations Dr. Lauren Waggoner for successfully defending your thesis!

November 8, 2022 - by Ester
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Dr. Julia Kudryashev successfully defends her thesis! First Kwon Lab Ph.D.!

August 18, 2022 - by Ester
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The lab celebrates 2021 over food, drinks, and hand sanitizer!

December 17, 2021 - by Ester
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Creating glittery seaweed hydrogels with the public at the Southeast SD Science & Art Expo

August 16, 2021 - by Ester
Katelyn, Rebecca, Marianne, Julia, and Shivani invite the public to synthesize calcium alignate hydrogels (with glitter!) at the Malcolm X Library for the Southeast SD Science + Art Expo.
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Marianne Madias, Hope Leng, and Joseph Rich awarded NSF GRFP

March 23rd, 2021 - by Ester
Marianne Madias is awarded funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships Program to support her thesis work to engineer materials that change transport properties of the blood-brain barrier. NSF GRFP awardees also include Hope Leng (current undergraduate researcher) and Joseph Rich (former summer REU student). Congratulations Marianne, Hope, and Joseph!
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Lab awarded NSF CAREER Award

March 15, 2021 - by Ester
Our lab was awarded the NSF CAREER award in order to develop traumatic brain injury diagnostics that can tell us more about the disease over the next five years. You can read more about our technology here.
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Happy new year!

January 6, 2021 - by Ester
The Kwon lab via Zoom - looking forward to meeting in person in 2021.
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Happy Holidays 2019!

December 7, 2019 - by Ester
The Kwon Lab and friends got together to eat dumplings. Everyone chipped in to fold dumplings and Lauren brought it to a new level with her bamboo steamer.
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Julia Kudryashev and Joseph Rich present at BMES in Philadelphia

October 19, 2019 - by Ester
Graduate student Julia Kudryashev presents her work in an oral platform at BMES in Philadelphia. REU student Joseph Rich mentored by Rebecca Kandell presents a poster of his summer research project.
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Rebecca Kandell becomes a NHLBI T32 training fellow

August 1, 2019 - by Ester
Rebecca joins the NHLBI T32 Training Program Integrative Bioengineering of Heart Vessels and Blood based on her proposal to exploit immune cells to deliver drugs to TBI. Congratulations Rebecca!
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Summer picnic 2019

July 23, 2019 - by Ester
We went to Ellen Browning Scripps Park to grill and get some sun!
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Alexander Yan presents at FMP

May 28, 2019 - by Ester
Alex presents his research project at the FMP Symposium to Rebecca and Lauren.
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Kwon Lab teaches high school students at Splash

April 20, 2019 - by Ester
Julia leads Alan, Lauren, Rebecca and Hope to teach a hands on activity for high school students at UCSD's Splash! After a crash course on tissue engineering, Kwon Lab students guide future engineers to use their imagination and create their own hydrogel materials. Read more here.
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Julia Kudryashev awarded NSF GRFP

April 9, 2019 - by Ester
Julia Kudryashev is awarded funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships Program to support her work in developing new diagnostics for TBI. Congratulations Julia!
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Nick Mininni presents REU research at BMES Atlanta 2018

October 20, 2018 - by Ester
Nick Mininni designed new sensors for traumatic brain injury with his mentor, Julia Kudryashev, during his summer REU in the Kwon Lab. Nick presented his research at the Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting held in Atlanta and is finishing his degree at North Carolina State University in Biomedical Engineering.
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Ester is a recipient of the 2018 NIH Director's New Innovator Award

October 2, 2018 - by Ester
Dr. Ester J. Kwon receives the 2018 NIH Director's New Innovator Award for her high-risk, high-reward proposal to engineer new therapeutic nanomaterials for traumatic brain injury. Traumatic brain injury is a critical unmet need, with no treatments available to improve the long-term brain health of patients. The 5-year, $1.5M award will support her lab's research on this medical challenge.
2018 NIH Director's New Innovator Award Recipients
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Yuko presents at Faculty Mentor Program Symposium

May 30, 2018 - by Ester
Alex visits Yuko's poster at the FMP Symposium.
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Nano-antibiotic paper accepted in Advanced Materials

July 12, 2017 - by Ester
Along with the Sailor and Ruoslahti Labs, we developed a nano-formulated peptide-based antibiotic to target bacteria with new mechanisms. Focusing on transport, we engineered a peptide that could target bacteria and also kill to have to subunits work in synergy. Read more about it in STM Editor's Choice and MIT News.
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Kwon Lab Opens

July 1, 2017 - by Ester
Excited to announce that I will be moving from Cambridge, Massachusetts to San Diego, California to start my own group at UCSD Bioengineering! Stay tuned ...