Project Title: Machine Perception Nanosensor Array Platform to Capture Whole Disease Fingerprints of Early Stage Pancreatic Cancer
Position: Assistant Professor
Institution: Georgia Tech
Funding NIH Institute/Center: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
Grant ID: R00EB033580
Mijin Kim grew up in South Korea. She became interested in material science and physical chemistry while working as an undergraduate research assistant in the analytical spectroscopy laboratory at Hanyang University in Korea. Dr. Kim moved to the United States to earn a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Maryland, College Park. During her PhD studies, she investigated the synthetic chemistry and photophysical studies of carbon nanomaterials. During her postdoctoral training in molecular pharmacology at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, Dr. Kim pioneered the biomedical applications of chemically modified carbon nanotubes. She developed a machine-learning enabled nanosensor array platform to identify a disease fingerprint of ovarian cancer from patient sera. She also developed lysosomal pH nanosensors that can dynamically monitor autophagy activation in vivo. Dr. Kim is currently an assistant professor at Georgia Tech. Her research program combines optical nanosensors, machine learning, and biochemical tools and aims to elucidate how nanosensor technologies can improve chemical biology research and disease detection. Throughout her training, she has been committed to promoting diversity in science and engineering through outreach at local high schools and mentoring students from underrepresented minority and disadvantaged backgrounds.