Minkyu Kim

Minkyu Kim, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona. He received a M.S. (2006) in Biomedical Engineering and a Ph.D. (2011) in Mechanical engineering and Materials Science at Duke University. During his Ph.D., he worked in the Single-Molecule Force Spectroscopy group led by Prof. Marszalek. He was a postdoc at MIT from 2012 to 2016, and worked in the Bioinspired and Biofunctional Polymers group led by Prof. Olsen. Dr. Kim’s research is focused on the design and development of biopolymer-based functional materials for targeted applications in healthcare and for national defense. Based on his diverse research experiences in the areas of biopolymer nanomechanics, polymer physics and self-assembly, biomolecular engineering and soft materials, his group is currently developing (a) mechanically responsive soft materials that mimic reversible deformability of red blood cell and that can be utilized as targeted drug delivery vehicles for the early treatment of atherosclerosis and (b) nuclear membrane inspired biopolymer materials that selectively filter and neutralize a broad range of bacteria, fungi and viruses for pharmaceutical, food safety, water decontamination and defense applications. In addition to biomaterial development to mitigate atherosclerosis and infectious diseases, Dr. Kim is also interested in addressing how bioinspired design and biosynthesis can be used for the preparation of novel functional materials, how the nanomechanics of folded biopolymers and artificially engineered hyperbranched biopolymer structures can be translated into the mechanics of macromolecular materials that provide new insight into polymer science, and how protein sequences can control parameters that regulate the functional properties of polymeric materials. Lab Website: http://kim.lab.arizona.edu