Tina Huang
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Tina Huang is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Physics at Harvard University's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Tina graduated from Princeton University in 2012 with a major in Physics, and a certificate in Electrical Engineering. After coming to Harvard, she began experimental soft matter research in the laboratory of Prof. David A. Weitz. Her research at Harvard has two main focuses. The first focus area is to make asymmetric lipid vesicles and polymersomes, which are aqueous volume surrounded by two dissimilar molecular monolayers of lipids or block copolymers with nanometer thickness through microfluidic technologies. These vesicles and polymersomes have potential in being used as drug delivery agents with new properties as well as model systems to study cell membrane. The second focus area is to study the wrinkling and collapsing phenomena of ultrathin, spherical soft material, such as the aforementioned lipid and polymer vesicles, in the MRSEC IRG2 under the guidance of her advisor Prof. David A.Weitz, Prof. David Nelson (Harvard), and Prof. Andrej Kosmrlj (Princeton). Wrinkling and collapsing of soft materials is not well understood, especially in ultrathin, spherical systems, which can be found in many applications, such as in the capsules in drug delivery systems. Understanding these phenomena will help scientists design more stable soft materials with longer lifetime as well.
Additionally, Tina has continuously collaborated with and advised visiting students and undergraduate students. Tina has advised undergraduate students for their senior thesis research, summer students as a part of MRSEC's REU program (Above: Tina (right) with Herbert Washington (FAMU) and Sylvia Rosenberg (Harvard)), and high school students from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. And she has also mentored Kayla Keepseagle from Montana State University. She has presented her work at MRSEC IRG meetings and also in the quarterly New England Complex Fluids Workshops.
