Project Description

Developing next-generation biomanufacturing of therapeutics is critical to meeting the growing demand for safe, effective, and accessible treatments. Traditional biomanufacturing methods, while successful, often struggle with scalability, cost, and consistency, especially for complex biologics like gene therapies, mRNA vaccines, and personalized medicines. Next-generation approaches—such as continuous processing, modular and automated systems, and AI-driven optimization—offer the potential to produce high-quality therapeutics more efficiently and at lower cost. These innovations not only improve reliability and speed but also expand the reach of advanced medicines to broader patient populations worldwide. By investing in modern biomanufacturing platforms, we can accelerate therapeutic development, strengthen supply chain resilience, and ensure that transformative treatments move from the laboratory to patients with greater speed and equity. This project aims at developing groundbreaking platform technologies using multidisciplinary tools in microfluidics, stem cells, machine learning to dramatically reduce the cost, improve efficiency and efficacy of current biomanufacturing of cell and gene therapies to treat a myriad of diseases including cancer and neurological diseases.

Start Date

January 1, 2026

Postdoc Qualifications

Desired candidates should hold PhD degree in mechanical, biomedical or chemical engieering, with demonstrated publication record.
Candidate with experience in microfluidics, stem cells, biomanufacturing, cell and gene therapy is preferred.

Co-advisors

Li Zhan, [email protected], mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, https://www.zhanlab.org/home;
Xiaoping Bao, [email protected], chemical engineering, https://sites.google.com/view/xiaoping-bao/home?_ga=2.8340338.1188719000.1755354865-1041423473.1747059309

Bibliography

Zhan, L., Edd, J., Mishra, A., & Toner, M. (2024). Label-free microfluidic apheresis of circulating tumor cell clusters. Advanced Science, 11(40), e2405853.

Zhan, L., Rao, J. S., Sethia, N., Slama, M. Q., Han, Z., Tobolt, D., Etheridge, M., Peterson, Q. P., Dutcher, C. S., Bischof, J. C., & Finger, E. B. (2022). Pancreatic islet cryopreservation by vitrification achieves high viability, function, recovery and clinical scalability for transplantation. Nature Medicine, 28(3), 798–808.

Zhan, L., Han, Z., Shao, Q., Etheridge, M. L., Hays, T., & Bischof, J. C. (2022). Rapid joule heating improves vitrification-based cryopreservation. Nature Communications, 13, Article 6017.

Chang, Y., Cai, X., Syahirah, R., Yao, Y., Xu, Y., Jin, G., Bhute, V. J., Torregrosa-Allen, S., Elzey, B. D., Won, Y.-Y., Deng, Q., Lian, X. L., Wang, X., Eniola-Adefeso, O., & Bao, X. (2023). CAR-neutrophil mediated delivery of tumor-microenvironment responsive nanodrugs for glioblastoma chemo-immunotherapy. Nature Communications, 14, Article 2266.

Zhu, D., Kim, W. J., Lee, H., Bao, X., & Kim, P. (2025). Engineering CAR-T therapeutics for enhanced solid tumor targeting. Advanced Materials. 2414882.