Sophomore chemistry student Albert Paredes has received a $500 scholarship. Paredes is a highly intelligent student who is passionate about organic chemistry and is working on the synthesis of an inorganic hydrogel for use in biomedical applications under the direction of professor Hai-Feng (Frank) Ji. He envisions such a hydrogel will be useful for better soft contact lenses as well as the scaffolds for soft tissue engineering where lubrication is essential. Inorganic hydrogels are expected to combine all the benefits of conventional hydrogels with an added advantage of resistance to oxidation and degradation.
Outside of his hydrogel research, Paredes has been supporting a project aimed at developing inhibitors for TIPE2—very important work which could lead to a drug candidate for the inhibition of oncogenesis, tumorigenesis and angiogenesis. Paredes has modeled thousands of compounds in the commercial database and modified several chemicals as lead compounds for this purpose. He has been continuously working on improving the compounds for such purposes, and the project is going very well.
Paredes recently finished up with a meaningful Drexel co-op assignment at Incyte Corp. that was focused on biotherapeutics research. There he designed and conducted cell-based assays aimed at developing better antibody therapies to treat cancer.