UMass Amherst Rising Researcher Program Recognizes Two Undergraduates from the Riccio College of Engineering
Content
The UMass Amherst Rising Researchers Program has chosen two very talented undergraduates from the Riccio College of Engineering (CoE) to honor them for becoming “leaders and role models as they guide other undergraduates in navigating the joys and anguish of conducting research.” Our two new Rising Researchers – Vy Do ’26 of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) Department and Robert Kwolek ’26 of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department – are both conducting cutting-edge research and belong to the Commonwealth Honors College.
The UMass Amherst Rising Researcher Program recognizes undergraduate students who excel in research, challenge their own intellects, and exercise exceptional creativity. According to the Rising Researcher website, its student-acknowledgement program “is designed to raise the profile of our most promising undergraduate students and publicly acknowledge their excellent work. This program is co-supported by University Relations, Research & Engagement, and the Commonwealth Honors College.”
Do, whose hometown is Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, does biomedical-engineering research to advance drug delivery. Specifically, she develops nanocarriers for therapeutic genetic materials to treat traumatic brain injuries and other neurological conditions (see her complete profile: https://www.umass.edu/gateway/research/stories/rising-researchers/biomedical-engineering-nanomedicine-drug-delivery).
As Do explains, “Since my sophomore year, I have been conducting research in Assistant Professor Jingjing Gao’s lab (https://www.jingjinggaolab.com/) in the UMass Amherst BME department. My work focuses on developing lipid nanoparticles, which are nanocarriers for therapeutic genetic materials to treat traumatic brain injuries through the nose-to-brain delivery route.” Last summer, she also joined Assistant Professor Anna Green’s lab in the Manning College of Information & Computer Sciences.
According to Do, in Gao’s lab, “I synthesized and characterized multiple nanoparticle formulations designed to enhance adherence to the mucous membrane inside the nose and evaluated their accumulation of each formulation in the brain and other organs of mouse models. The top candidate with the highest brain uptake was then used to encapsulate a genetic therapeutic and delivered to traumatic-brain-injury models to help repair cognitive function after injury.”
Do notes that drug delivery is a core component of the drug-development pipeline that ensures therapeutics reach their intended area precisely and with high safety for patients.
In that context, Do says that “Nose-to-brain delivery is an alternative route that bypasses systemic circulation and physiological barriers and allows drugs to be delivered directly into the brain. Developing effective lipid nanoparticles as a universal platform for gene therapy through nose-to-brain delivery can facilitate many advanced treatments for multiple neurological diseases, such as traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.”
Kwolek, who comes from Lexington, Massachusetts, investigates the design and validation of integrated-quantum-photonic circuits in his sophisticated research to advance photonic-quantum-information processors and sensors (see his complete profile: https://www.umass.edu/gateway/research/stories/rising-researchers/photonic-quantum-information-processors-sensors). He works in ECE Assistant Professor Rajveer Nehra’s Quantum Information Systems Lab.
As Kwolek explains the backstory to his research, “Electrical and computer engineering, in particular, offers a chance to investigate the inner workings of everyday technologies – from phones to wireless communication to the Internet – which are all around us but remain a mystery to most people. It’s satisfying to not only learn how technology functions but also know how to design it from the ground up.”
According to Kwolek, “Our lab is developing next-generation nanophotonic devices and systems for quantum computing, communication, and sensing applications. My work in the lab focuses on the fabrication-aware design and measurement of integrated-quantum-photonic chips and components.”
Kwolek explains that “Advancing photonic chips holds promise to revolutionize all sorts of things, from communication to sensing to measurement. Photonic chips can offer far more precision than classical schemes; this can allow for more precise measurements in, for example, medical devices or communication systems.”
Kwolek concludes that research on photonic chips “could also revolutionize computation as a whole, particularly if we can enable communication between different quantum computers or physically implement all-optical quantum computers, especially if this is done at chip scale.”
Earlier this year, Yaozu Chen '25 of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department was named a Spring 2025 Rising Researcher.
(December 2025)