Welcome to the Zhao Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago! Our research program strives to innovate drug delivery, cellular engineering, and immunoengineering technologies for advanced medicine, with the ultimate goal to improve the diagnosis and treatment of a range of diseases including cancer, infectious diseases, inflammation, drug addictions, and autoimmune diseases. We exploit inspirations from intrinsic biology to fundamentally understand synthetic materials-biology interactions and to develop application-driven technologies for advanced therapeutics. The current focus of our research group includes 1) engineering living cells as the next-generation platforms to tackle biological barriers for drug delivery, gene editing, and beyond, 2) genetic engineering of immune cells for advanced cell therapy, and 3) biomimetic and material-driven engineering of the immune system/cells for vaccination and immunomodulation. Please check RESEARCH for more information.