LAB's Head

Dr Bertrand CZARNY

Dr Bertrand CZARNY received a PhD degree on structural and functional engineering of biomolecules at University of Paris Descartes. He joined the French governmental agency CEA (Atomic Energy Commission), then Utrecht university, for more than 10 years, and studied the biodistribution, drug delivery systems and toxicology of nanoparticles.

Dr Bertrand CZARNY is Assistant Professor at School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and holds a join position at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKC) in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

His research is focused on the development of nanomedicines with large emphasis on exosomes mimetic and in vivo pre-clinical studies. His research is highly translational, and is broadly applicable to many pathological conditions.

Teaching: undergraduate MS4013 biomaterials

ORCID PROFILE

Research fellow

Dinesh Kumar Kesavan

Dr Dinesh is a senior research fellow in our lab who works on developing a bacterial mimetic vaccine against human bacterial infections. His Master’s and postdoctoral research focused on bacterial extracellular vesicles, membrane proteins, antibiotic resistance, and bioactive natural compounds from microorganisms. He studies bacterial mimetic vesicles at BertLab as vaccines for Streptococcus pneumoniae and Klebsiella pneumoniae. He is also developing therapeutic mimetic stem cell vesicles against wound infection pathogens. During his three-year first postdoctoral fellowship at Jiangsu University, China, his research focused on bacterial whole gene transcriptome, proteome analysis of antibacterial drug resistance, membrane transport proteins, OMVs isolation, and purification.  He has PhD in biotechnology with a microbiology specialisation from SRM University, India’s School of Bioengineering. His PhD research is focused on isolating and identifying marine bioactive secondary metabolites from Actinomycetes, finding new bioactive metabolite targets for bioactive compounds using the in silico approach, and validating them in vitro bioassays. He is an expert in chemical database mining, pharmacophore, QSAR, and structure-based secondary metabolite identification of targets. As a senior researcher in the Department of Biotechnology, Indo-Japanese collaboration project, he conducted research to identify inhibitors for MDR efflux pumps in Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa using computational and in vitro methods.

PhD students

Liqi Wong

Liqi is a PhD student in our lab (2023-      ). She received her bachelor’s degree from the School of Materials Science (MSE) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in 2023. Her current project primarily focuses on CAR T cell targeting for infectious diseases. She is also involved in various aspects of the research process, from cell culture techniques to the production of bacterial vesicles. During her final year project, she worked on encapsulating host-derived probiotics using functional polysaccharides, which equipped her with techniques such as SEM, freeze-drying, and needle extrusion. This final year project experience allowed her to gain valuable insight into the research field and develop a keen interest in the biological sciences.

LIM YUN WEI

Lim Yun Wei is a PhD student in our lab (2022-      ). He completed his bachelor’s degree from School of Materials Science (MSE) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in year 2022. His current research interest focuses on developing probiotics extracellular vesicle as nanomedicine for the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases. His works underscore multidisciplinary research techniques including isolation and purification of nanovesicles, in vivo experimentation, bacterial and cell culture ,and TEM imaging.

MOHAMED KHWAJAH SYED MEERA LEBBAI MARICAR

PhD Candidate co-supervised with Prof Ali Miserez (2022-    )

Melvin Liew

CELL-MIMICKING NANOLIPOGEL FOR ENCAPSULATION AND DELIVERY OF HYDROPHILIC BIOMOLECULES

This  project hypothesis is that the cell-mimicking biomimetic NLG system can provide a controlled release of hydrophilic biomolecules, by studying the effects of changing the hydrogel core and membrane properties on the release of encapsulated biomolecules.

Staff

Logeshwari MN

Logeshwari is a research associate with the School of Material Science at Nanyang Technological University. She received bachelor’s and master’s biotechnology degrees from Anna University, India. She has almost 8 years of research experience in biotechnical and microbiological areas.

Since 2022 she has been associated with Prof. Bertrand’s lab  and exposed to multiple projects  such as nanovesicle production, animal work, cell culture, Mimic Extracellular Vesicles production, lab maintenance and other laboratory and admin duties.

BYUN SUYEON

Suyeon is a Research Assistant in our lab. Her research is focused on developing antibacterial mimetic cell-derived nanovesicles from Mesenchymal stem cells. She is also an expert in isolating, purifying, and characterising mimetic vesicles and exosomes from pathogenic bacteria and various human and animal cells.  She received her bachelor’s degree in chemistry, chemical engineering, and biotechnology (CCEB) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in 2024. Her current project primarily focuses on producing antibacterial Mesenchymal Stem Cell vesicles via priming with bacterial vesicles derived from Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Alumni