Assistant professor of the chemical engineering department, Lianhong Sun, received a five-year, $400,000 grant from the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue research on the development of therapeutic protein production.

Sun started his research three years ago, and just recently gathered enough data to fund the program.

The goal of his research is to demonstrate a system to produce therapeutic proteins, as well as engineer a competent system to produce the human Interleukin-2 (IL-2) into the E. coli bacterium, which will essentially create the protein more efficiently.

The E. coli bacterium will be used as a model for his testing, and Sun will look to see how much of the therapeutic protein he is able to produce with this process.

“I believe it to be a better method than anything else,” he said.

The next step will be to isolate the protein in its purified form, where it can then be used for medical purposes.

Sun is hoping to be successful with his work. He hopes that these proteins will help in therapies involved with infectious diseases, cancer, and HIV. The cost of many pharmaceutical drugs will be reduced as well.

The CAREER Program is the NSF’s most prestigious awards for new faculty, and it recognizes and supports the early career development activities for those faculty members who have a good chance at becoming academic leaders of the 21st century.

Awardees are selected on the basis of creative, integrative, and effective research as well as education career development plans that supply contributions to research and education.

Michael Malone, dean of the engineering department says the career award is a great way to get people to think about their career early on.

“There are very few awards where research and education are so tightly integrated,” he said. “It [CAREER] is a terrific program for academics to get funded.”

Malone added that this award is important in modernizing the curriculum, especially in engineering.

“Science is changing all the time,” he said. “You need to make sure you’re having updates to your curriculum, to provide different expertise in different programs,” he said.

Head of the department of chemical engineering professor Triantafillos Mountziaris says the CAREER award helps the visibility of the department and the UMass campus as a whole.

“Whoever receives this award is bestowed with an honor. It is a very prestigious award,” he said.

Mountziaris believes Sun is a very talented young faculty member, as well as a professor. He is very excited to have Sun here at the University to be a part of the community of scholars.

Out of the four assistant professors in the department of chemical engineering, three have won the CAREER grant to further their research, while the fourth recently accepted a $1 million dollar grant from the National Institute of Health.

“This is a record. It’s not really a common to have this situation,” said Mountziaris. “It’s very honorable, and very rare.”

Jess Sacco can be reached at [email protected]