Hak-Joon Sung receives NSF Career Award
Hak-Joon Sung’s research explores a new approach to regenerate injured small blood vessels as well as create a new tool box for minimally invasive surgery. He will be evaluating the effectiveness of an injectable vascular patch made of a smart biomaterial whose shape, size and thickness can be customized to fit even tiny damaged blood vessels such as those caused by cerebral hemorrhages and that lead to stroke. This patch product will be designed to use “artificial intelligence”-like procedures to navigate to individual blood vessels, detect the nature of the damage and initiate repair work. This design will enable the patch to regain its original shape with a suture-free sealing effect when it flows to an injury site of small blood vessels through remote injection. Sung also plans to create a web-based community of students from the United States and South Korea to focus on biomaterials and tissue engineering. Sung joined the Biomedical Engineering department in 2009.