Dr. Josh Ramsey, a chemical engineering faculty member at Oklahoma State University, has been selected for a $490,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to explore a safer delivery system for gene therapy. The Faculty Early Career (CAREER) Development Program supports junior faculty who excel in research and its integration with education.
Ramsey, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, will focus on discovering and characterizing new materials to help in the transition to a new delivery system for gene therapy. “We hope our work will provide incremental steps to transition from virus-based delivery to a synthetic particle-based method and ultimately help transform the field of gene therapy from a fringe medical treatment to a common way to prevent and treat disease,” said Ramsey.
As an education component to his research, Ramsey will be working with high school teachers to integrate biomedical engineering principles into their current curriculum to train the next generation of scientists and engineers. The project will also involve a two-week summer research experience intended to give Native American, African American and home-schooled high school students the opportunity to work in a university research laboratory.
Ramsey is the third consecutive chemical engineering faculty member at OSU to receive the CAREER Award, a major point of pride for both the School of Chemical Engineering and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology at OSU.
Ramsey received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from OSU, and a master’s from the University of Illinois. He received a doctorate in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the University of Illinois in 2006, and served as a PhRMA Foundation Fellow at the University of Kansas in 2007.
