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

Graduate Students

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.

Thomas Cowell
tcowell2 at illinois dot edu
Thomas is graduate student in the Physical Chemistry PhD program at UIUC. He obtained his BA in Chemistry from Middlebury College, doing research into the thermal decomposition of organsulfur compounds with applications in fuel desufurization. Thomas joined the Han lab in 2017 where he conducts research using droplet microfluidics for highthroughput single virus sequencing.

Wenyang Jing
wenyang3 at illinois dot edu
Wenyang is PhD student in the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology program. He earned a BS in physics from McGill University and a MS in physics from the University of Ottawa under Michel Godin, where his work was on single cell biophysics using a microfluidic cell volume sensor and the study of the relationship between cellular fitness and drug resistance. His current work in the Han Lab focuses on viral sequencing using droplet microfluidics.

Ryan Miller
ryancm4 at illinois dot edu
Ryan is a PhD student in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department. He received his BS in Chemical Engineering at Georgia Tech, conducting research on transient polymer synthesis for decomposable devices. Ryan is a member of both the Kong and Han labs where he conducts research on ROS-responsive antioxidant crystal delivery for ocular and neurodegenerative diseases.

Marisa Asadian
asadian2 at illinois dot edu
Marisa completed a BS in chemistry with an emphasis in biology and a minor in physics from the University of Utah. As an undergraduate, she worked in Prof. Peter Armentrout’s lab studying dysprosium cationic molecules to understand metal bonding characteristics, establish periodic trends, and study its electronic structure. She also did research abroad with Prof. Uwe Schröder studying microbial electrolysis at Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany. Marisa joined the Han lab in 2020 where she now focuses her research on transcriptomic analysis using multiplexed bioimaging.

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.

Yaxin Yang
yaxiny2 at illinois dot edu
Yaxin Yang is a graduate student in the bioengineering program. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Rochester with a major in Molecular Genetics and Data Science. As an undergraduate student, she worked in Prof. Heng Li’s lab doing research about long read RNA sequencing and in Prof. Jeniffer Brission’s lab doing research about the ecdysone response element in pea aphids. In the Han Lab, Yaxin’s research focuses on spatial transcriptomic analysis using computational tools.

Undergraduates

Seungwook Kim
sk64 at illinois dot edu
Seungwook is an undergraduate student majoring in specialized chemistry. He enjoys watching soccer and basketball games in his free time. He joined the Han Lab in 2022 and works with Heewon using microfluidic approaches for sensitive detection of viruses and associated circular RNA.

Lab Alumni