Yumiao Zhang wins 1st place at the Northeast Bioengineering Conference.

Yumiao Zhang.

Yumiao Zhang, a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical and Biological Engineering won the first place prize out of a field of 150 entrants for his poster presentation at the 41st Northeast Bioengineering Conference (NEBEC 2015) held in Troy, New York held April 17-19th.

Yumiao's poster, entitled "Frozen Naphthalocyanine micelles for Intestinal Imaging" presents a new non-invasive method to image intestine function.

By engineering nanoparticles with extremely high color content, their motion could be traced non-invasively in the intestine using an imaging technique called photoacoustic tomography. Eventually, this could lead to better diagnosis of conditions like Crohn's disease, or be used for colonoscopy screening procedures. Yumiao led the research that involved an multidisciplinary team with collaborating researchers from University of Madison-Wisconsin, POSTECH University in Korea and McMaster University in Canada.

The first place prize comes with a $500 cash prize. Yumiao is a student in the lab of Dr. Jonathan Lovell of Biomedical Engineering.

Zhang in Dr. Jonathan Lovell's lab.