Where is he now?
2025 – May
Owen has been on an amazing adventure since the end of his senior year of high school and throughout his first year of college. He took time to share with us a few of the highlights of a year that he will never forget. He feels like he has grown so much as a person, friend, community-member, and young professional!
In the summer of 2024 he went abroad to Taipei, Taiwan for an immersive language learning experience for Mandarin Chinese. This opportunity was provided by a U.S. Department of State scholarship program called the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y). In Taipei he lived with a local host family — a mom, a dad, a 5-year-old sister, and a 7-year-old brother — and attended language classes daily at Shih Chien University. He learned so much about daily life in another culture halfway across the world, and of course a whole lot of Chinese.
After that experience, he started his first year of engineering school at The Ohio State University. He absolutely loves majoring in Chemical and Bio-molecular Engineering, and even picked up a Pharmaceutical Science minor. With some exposure in high school, he was eager to get involved with undergraduate research early and absolutely fell in LOVE with it.
In September he joined the Andre Palmer Laboratory for Artificial Blood Research as an undergraduate research assistant. This group, led by Dr. Andre Palmer, studies all things blood related, including ways to make synthetic blood, nano-particles for oxygen carrying, and even blood-derived protein therapeutics. Specifically, he works on a project under a PhD student on the purification of the plasma-found protein hemopexin, which serves as a scavenger for acellular heme, a compound released when your red blood cells die. Essentially, it is like a trash collector that comes by to pick up the things your body doesn’t want freely roaming around in the bloodstream. Through purifying this protein, their goal is to make a scalable and optimized way to produce this protein for therapeutic applications that span as far as sickle cell anemia, kidney disease, cancer, and even malaria.
Owen also got to do an independent research project in his Fundamentals of Engineering class. For this project, he and his two teammates imagined, designed, and tested a new treatment for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) that outperforms existing options in terms of specificity, reduced adverse effects, and cost. The therapy they made, Doxcam, is an antibody-conjugated nanoparticle (ACNP) composed of CEACAM5-specific mABs linked to a doxorubicin-loaded liposome that is then atomized in a liquid propellant solution for direct inhaled delivery through the pulmonary tract. What this means is that they made an inhalable chemotherapy that specifically targets cancerous cells in the lungs without damaging your healthy cells! They had the pleasure of being able to present all our hard work on this project a poster competition at OSU and won first place!
Owen has really enjoyed getting involved in the Columbus community, especially through service. He was recently elected president of The Main Menu Project, a student organization at OSU that works to promote accessibility and increased independence for people with visual impairments in the local restaurant scene. This is achieved by collaborating with various cafes and restaurants (18 to date) to turn their menu into a screen-reader-friendly PDF, which we then make physically available to customers through the use of NFC technology (kinda like a QR-code). It’s been very special for him to work with such amazing communities — both often overlooked. Through The Main Menu Project, he also got to present at his first conference ever; The Multiple Perspectives Conference hosted by The OSU ADA Coordinator’s Office!
This summer Owen is excited to be headed off to Puerto Rico with the support of a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct research in Dr. Arthur Tinoco’s lab at the University of Puerto Rico. His work centers on bioinorganic chemistry and finding novel ways to advance cancer treatment using small molecules.
Throughout his incredible journey Owen recognizes the amazing support he received from his community back at home in Fort Thomas.
As Owen continues his amazing adventure we cheer him, and all of our MCSF alumni, to make use of every opportunity to pay it forward.