Eilaf Egap facts for kids

Eilaf Egap is a scientist who teaches and does research at Rice University. She works on exciting projects using special materials to help find diseases early and deliver medicines inside the body. She was also a special visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Early Life and Learning

Eilaf Egap was born in Athens, Ohio, and grew up in New York City. When she first went to Stony Brook University, she studied philosophy. But then, she met a chemistry professor who inspired her. She decided to switch her studies to chemistry and graduated in 2005.

She continued her studies at the University of Washington, earning her advanced degree in 2011. There, she worked with Professor Samson Jenekhe. Her research focused on creating tiny, complex materials called macromolecules. She studied how these materials could be used in new electronic devices. This included things like organic field-effect transistors, which are like tiny switches, and organic photovoltaics, which turn light into electricity. She also worked on light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which make light. Her goal was to understand how these tiny parts behave in electronics.

After her studies, Dr. Egap joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a researcher. From 2011 to 2013, she was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar. During this time, she developed a new way to use tiny polymer particles for in vivo imaging. This means using them to see inside living things. She won awards for her work, including the Carl Storm Award in 2013.

Her Research Work

In 2014, Dr. Egap started working at Emory University. She also held a position at the Georgia Institute of Technology in a department that combines engineering and medicine. Her research looked at how different properties of polymers (a type of plastic material) make them gather together in specific ways.

She received the 2015 Thieme Publishers Chemistry Award for her achievements. In 2016, a science magazine called Chemical & Engineering News highlighted her as a "Must See" scientist. She showed how to line up tiny polymer wires in a special way. She also received an award from the National Science Foundation to study new types of polymers. She used advanced tools to understand how these materials work at a very tiny level. She is interested in how tiny particles called "spin" behave in these materials. She also created a summer program to help students from historically black colleges and universities get involved in science research.

In 2017, Dr. Egap was recognized as an "Emerging Investigator" by the Journal of Materials Chemistry C. She showed how special polymers could be used to deliver medicines directly to cancer cells. These tiny particles can target specific cells, like those with folate receptors, which are often found on cancer cells.

Later in 2017, she moved to Rice University. There, she explored new ways to make useful polymers. She used tiny light-sensitive particles called quantum dots to help create these polymers. This method, called photo-controlled atom transfer radical polymerization, could replace older ways of making materials like block copolymers. In 2018, she received the Young Investigator award from the American Chemical Society Polymer Materials Science Engineering (PMSE) group.