Gabe Kwong, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor 
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Emory University

Bio

Gabe Kwong, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory. His lab pioneers transformative biotechnologies to address frontier clinical challenges in cancer, organ transplant rejection, and infectious diseases. His work has published in leading scientific journals and featured by the media including The Economist, NPR, BBC, and WGBH-2, Boston’s PBS station.

Professor Kwong earned his B.S. with Highest Honors from UC Berkeley, his Ph.D. from Caltech with Professor James R. Heath, and conducted postdoctoral studies at MIT with Professor Sangeeta N. Bhatia. In recognition of his work, Dr. Kwong has been honored with selective distinctions including the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. Dr. Kwong co-founded Glympse Bio, and holds 25+ issued or pending patents in biomedical technology.
 

Research Interests

Human health has been transformed by our collective capacity to engineer immunity — from the pivotal development of the smallpox vaccine to the curative potential of recent cancer immunotherapies. These examples motivate our research program that is conducted at the interface of Engineering and Immunology, and where we develop biomedical technologies and applications that shape a diverse array of immunological systems.

The questions that are central to our exploration include: How do we begin to study an individual's repertoire of well over one billion immune cells when current technologies only allow us to study a handful of cells at a time? What are the biomarkers of immunological health as the body responds to disease and ageing, and how may these indicators trigger clinical decisions? And how can we genetically rewire immune cells to provide them with entirely new functions to better fight complex diseases such as cancer?

To aid in our studies, we use high-throughput technologies such as next-generation sequencing and quantitative mass spectrometry, and pioneer the development of micro- and nanotechnologies in order to achieve our goals. We focus on clinical problems in cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmunity, and ultimately strive to translate key findings into therapies for patients.

The IBB Breakfast Club Seminar Series was started with the spirit of the Institute's interdisciplinary mission in mind to feature local IBB faculty member's research in a seminar format. Faculty are often asked to speak at other universities and conferences, but do not often present at their home institution - this seminar series is an attempt to close that gap. IBB Breakfast Club Seminars are open to anyone in the bio-community.