Biography

 

 

 

 

Frank Y. S. Chuang is a medical scientist and bioengineer – working jointly at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), University of California (UC) Davis Cancer Center and NSF Center for Biophotonics, Science & Technology (CBST).  After completing his undergraduate work in bioengineering at UC Berkeley in 1987, Frank joined an multidisciplinary team of physicians, scientists and engineers based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), UCSF and Stanford University Medical Centers to develop a new method of treating surgically-inoperable brain tumors using high-energy particle beams generated by the powerful Bevalac research accelerator at LBNL. 

 

In 1990 he received an NIH graduate fellowship to enter the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.  Frank earned a doctorate in biophysics and immunology for his work using fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy to investigate transmembrane signaling in human white blood cells.  After completing his medical training in 2000, Dr. Chuang returned as a post-doctoral researcher to the Medical Physics & Biophysics Division of LLNL, working on new biomedical technologies supported by the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  One project in particular: the Microbead Immunoassay Diagnostic System (MIDS), was designed to be a handheld device that used fluorescent microbeads to efficiently capture and detect microbial pathogens at the earliest stages of infection.

 

With his background in biomedical science, bioengineering and clinical medicine, Frank received an academic appointment last year through the UC Davis Medical Center and is involved with several new research projects at LLNL, including (1) using metallic “nanobarcodes” as molecular tags for biodetection, and (2) the development of a compact, proton accelerator that will produce particle beams for radiation treatment of cancer and other tumors.  Recently, Frank has been working with CBST at UC Davis and the Science & Technology Education Program (STEP) at LLNL to promote science education outreach at the high school and college levels (as well as the general public) – on current topics in biodefense and biophotonics.