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Hyunmin Yi
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering
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Research Scope:
Professor Hyunmin Yi is the Department's newest addition in
2006. His general research interests lie in biochemically
driven nanometer scale fabrication (nanobiofabrication)
of high throughput biosensors, biophotonic devices and
nanocatalysts for biomedical, environmental and energy
applications using smart biopolymers and viral nanotemplates.
Nanobiofabrication with Genetically Modified Viral
Nanotemplates
Professor Yi's group has developed nucleic acid
hybridization based surface assembly strategies of
genetically modified tobacco mosaic viruses through their
own genomic mRNA. These biologically derived nanotubes, with
the precise dimensions of 300 nanometer (nm) length, 18nm
outer diameter and 4nm inner channel can serve as
nanotemplates for covalent coupling of various functional
nanoparticles. Building upon such facile assembly strategies
of these potent nanotemplates, his group is working toward
the development of high throughput biosensors and BioMEMS
devices for environmental and biological threat detection.
In a closely related direction, they are also developing
nanoscale gold partcle based catalysts for energy
applications in collaboration with Professor Maria Flytzani-Stephanopoulos
using the viruses as nanotemplates with high capacity and
precise nanoscale spacing.
Biophotonic Device Fabrication with Smart Biopolymers
In this line of research, his group seeks to develop
biocompatible high throughput biosensing platforms and
implantable biophotonic devices for biomedical and
environmental applications. For this, they harness
stimuli-responsive properties of smart biopolymers to
fabricate nanoscale patterns and waveguides with high
spatial, temporal and orientational control. Exemplary
biopolymers include structural proteins such as gelatin and
silk as well as polysaccharides such as agarose and chitosan.
Recently they have shown that the thermo-responsive
morphology transition of common biopolymers such as gelatin
and agarose can lead to an efficient means for consistent
manufacturing of nanometer scale surface diffraction
gratings in mild processing conditions. They are currently
working on building all-biopolymeric implantable waveguides,
photonic bandgap crystal fiber based biosensors and
nanoimprinted biopolymeric gratings.
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