Student Profile: Sarah Nevins

Department: Chemistry and Chemical Biology
Advisor: Dr. Ki-Bum Lee
sjn74@chem.rutgers.edu

Education
B.S. Chemistry/Biological Chemistry Track, Carnegie Mellon University, 2021 
Ph.D. Student, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers University 

Research Interests
Nanoparticles, Nanomaterials, Therapeutic platforms, Central Nervous System, Cell-Cell interactions.

Research Summary
Nanomaterials, defined as between 1 – 100 nm, have been shown to have unique properties for biomedical uses over the past 30 years. They give potential for selective targeting and release of therapeutics, as well as serving as multifunctional platforms for drug delivery. The brain is one of the hardest places to target in medicine, due to the blood brain barrier, but many diseases that take place there, such as neurodegenerative (ND) diseases, are becoming more prevalent as medicine continues to help people live to an older age. Two of the main targets in these diseases are protein aggregates and inflammatory processes that are leading factors in cell death. I am currently working on the creation of a novel nanoparticle-based platform to target protein aggregation and inflammatory processes in neurons for Alzheimer’s disease. Cell-cell interactions are extremely important in the disease microenvironment, so I am working on creating co-cultures to better study the effects of therapeutics on the system. By studying how targeted therapeutics effect more than just one cell type, therapeutics can be better optimized to have positive effects.  

Awards & Honors
NIH T32 Biotechnology Training Program Fellowship, September 2022 –Present  
Excellence Fellowship for doctoral study in Chemistry and Chemical Biology, September 2021–August 2022      
Carnegie Mellon Summer Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship (SURA), Summer 2019

Publications
Li Y, Li S, Nagarajan A, Liu Z, Nevins S, Song Y, Mpourmpakis G, Jin R. Hydrogen Evolution Electrocatalyst Design: Turning Inert Gold into Active Catalyst by Atomically Precise Nanochemistry. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 2021, 143 (29), 11102-11108; DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c04606.

Representative Graduate Courses Taken
Structure and Dynamics in Adult and Stem Cell Biology 
Biophysical Chemistry 1 
Concepts in Nanochemistry

Leadership & Outreach
President, Carnegie Mellon Alpine Racing and Freestyle Team, 2020-2021   
Housing and Transportation Coordinator, Carnegie Mellon Alpine Racing and Freestyle Team, 2019-2020