Group Members

Principal Investigator

Hee-Sun Han, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor and Mark A. Pytosh Scholar
Department of Chemistry
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Faculty Affiliate at The Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology

About Hee-Sun

Postdocs

Alex Schrader
alexws2 at illinois dot edu
Alex studied chemistry at Drury University, a liberal arts college in Springfield, Missouri. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry in the spring of 2017. While an undergraduate, his research focused on instrumental analysis, studying the binding of small proteins to heparin using capillary electrophoresis. In the Han group, he now specializes in massively multiplexed imaging of single molecules in healthy or diseased tissues. His interests include programming, reading, and playing video games.

Graduate Students

Sungjong Lee
sl51 at illinois dot edu
Sungjong was born and raised in South Korea. He obtained his B.S. and M.S. from Korea University, where he worked on the synthesis of 2-arylindole-3-acetic acid derivatives using cyanide-mediated imino-Stetter reactions under Prof. Cheol-Hong Cheon. Sungjong began his graduate work at UIUC in the Sarlah group in 2018, where he studied the synthesis of aminoglycosides. He joined the Han Lab in 2021 working on the synthesis and application of quantum dots. Outside the lab, Sungjong enjoys listening to music, singing songs, and playing the clarinet. He also likes pets and games.

Chih-Lin Chen
chihlin3 at illinois dot edu
Chih-Lin obtained a BS in Applied Chemistry from National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU) and a MS from National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taiwan. As an undergraduate, he worked in Prof. Paweł Urban’ lab to develop automatic miniature device to monitor dynamic chemical reactions. After graduating from NCTU, he worked with Prof. Cheng-Chih Hsu in NTU to develop ambient ionization mass spectrometry ion sources. Now he joined the Han group to conduct research with droplet microfluidics.

Heewon Noh
heewonn2 at illinois dot edu
Heewon is a Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering graduate student. She earned her BS and MS from Seoul National University in Korea. She worked in Prof. Byung-gee Kim’s lab doing research on biocatalysis and protein engineering. She joined the Han group in 2021. Her research interest lies in the field of synthetic biology, currently working on synthetic cell construction.

Qianlu (Farah) Feng
qianluf2 at illinois dot edu
Qianlu (Farah) Feng is a graduate student in Neuroscience at UIUC. She graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.S. degree in Mathematics as well as in Biochemistry. As an undergraduate, her research with Dr. Chad Rienstra and Dr. Ronnie Frederick focused on Parkinson’s related α-synuclein protein. Working with Dr. Lingjun Li, Farah studied crustacean hemolymph neuropeptides. In the Han Lab, her research focuses on imaging-based spatial transcriptomic techniques. She enjoys skiing, soccer, violin/playing in orchestra, and video production.

Seokjin Yeo
sy44 at illinois dot edu
Seokjin is a graduate student in Bioengineering at UIUC. He obtained a B. S. from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. As an undergraduate he worked in the lab of Prof. Seung-Kyun Lee, where he developed methods to rapidly calculate static magnetic field perturbations generated by magnetized objects in arbitrary orientations. He joined Han group in 2022 where he now works on imaging-based spatial transcriptomics. He enjoys playing badminton.

Jiaqi Liu
jiaqil123 at illinois dot edu
Jiaqi is a graduate student in Neuroscience Program (NSP) at University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. She obtained her B.S. degree in neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with minors in Chemistry and Studio Art. During her undergraduate studies, she worked with Dr. Eva Anton on the neuronal primary cilia connectome in the human cerebral cortex. Joining Han Lab in 2024, her current research focuses on imaging-based spatial transcriptomics.

Ella Pickell
ellap4 at illinois dot edu
Ella Pickell received a B.S. in Chemistry with minors in Forensic Science and Physics from Hofstra University on Long Island. In undergrad she worked with Dr. Deborah Silva on forensic DNA research, and completed a computational chemistry research project with Dr. Daniel Miller. She joined the HanLab in the fall of 2024 working on droplet microfluidics. Outside of lab she likes to bake, read, and spend time with family and friends.

Undergraduates

Evan Lu
evanlu2a at illinois dot edu
Evan Lu is an undergraduate student in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. He joined the Han Lab in 2024 and is currently working on droplet microfluidics. In his free time, he likes watching movies, cooking, and hanging out with friends.

Abhay Hiredesai
ahire3 at illinois dot edu
I’m an undergraduate student studying Biochemistry with a minor in Computer Science and I’m currently working on imaging-based spatial transcriptomics. Some of the things I do in my free time is play tennis, hang out with friends, and go to the gym.

Lab Alumni