Yingling Receives NSF Career Award

Dr. Yaroslava G. Yingling, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, will use a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation to study DNA-functionalized surfaces.

The NSF Career award will provide $335,00 in funding over five years for Yingling’s project, “Integrating DNA and Inorganic Surfaces for Functional Materials Design.” The research could contribute to developing materials for DNA microarrays and biosensors, DNA-based targeted drug delivery, DNA nanomaterials assembly, and DNA directed surface assembly and patterning.

Yingling’s research will formulate rules that will enable the design of new functional materials for biosensors and enhance researchers’ ability to control and direct the materials assembly processes. She will use molecular modeling techniques to develop a theoretical description of the correlation between DNA structure, surface design and properties of DNA-functionalized surfaces.

The proposed research program will be integrated with new education opportunities in disciplines related to DNA and functional surfaces for K-12, undergraduate and graduate students.

Yingling received a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University in Russia. She earned a doctorate in materials engineering and high performance computing applications from Pennsylvania State University.