Our first research focus is on understanding and exploiting the interactions of cells with nanostructures for therapeutic applications. We design multi-functional nanoparticles to deliver drug, antigen, protein, siRNA, and DNA to cells for drug, gene, and immunotherapy, as well as nonviral gene editing. The second focus is on constructing human tissue-on-chips for disease modeling and drug development, particularly in using tissue-engineer blood vessel to model Marfan Syndrome and atherosclerosis and generating patient-specific brain organoid to model neuropsychiatric disorders and to address opioid usage disorder.