Woo Lee Email and Phone Number

After my formal training in Chemical Engineering, I began my career by developing new materials for aerospace propulsion and power generation applications while working at United Technologies and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For my contribution in this research field, I was elected to Fellow of the American Ceramic Society. I joined Stevens in 1997 as Associate Professor of Materials Science to pursue my academic career. During this period, I became fascinated about using microfluidic devices to assemble nanomaterials for energy storage and sensor applications and study bacteria interactions with host tissue cells and biomaterials. I was promoted to Professor in 2000, and served as Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science from 2001 to 2005.The current focus of my lab is to develop and use microfluidic-based 3D human tissue models (i.e., “human tissue on chip”) to study inflammatory and infectious diseases and explore novel therapy. Especially, my overarching research goals for the past decade have been to: (1) reproduce ex vivo the pathophysiological interactions among cancer, stroma, and immune cells in bone marrow, (2) bring new insights into poorly understood mechanisms of drug resistance in multiple myeloma tumor microenvironment, and (3) study how tumor cells evade immunity so that immunotherapy can be developed to be more efficacious.In 2020, I assumed my current role as Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology to provide my interdisciplinary perspective to position the Department as an intellectual nexus at the intersection of science, engineering, and medicine. In particular, my leadership effort is aimed at transforming the Department to be an exciting place for our students to study and for our faculty to work . Also, as part of my new teaching portfolio, my pedagogical endeavor is focused on innovating introductory biology courses through active learning and knowledge building activities.