About

Hee Sun Han is a Principal Investigator and Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois. His research focuses on biological systems measurement and analytical platforms, contributing to the understanding and development of methods for analyzing complex biological processes. As a faculty member at the Han Lab, he is involved in advancing scientific knowledge through innovative research in biological systems.

Research topics

• Nanotechnology
• Biology
• Materials science
• Chemistry
• Computer Science
• Computational biology
• Telecommunications
• Molecular biology

Selected publications

• Droplet Microfluidics for High-Resolution Virology

  Analytical Chemistry · 2022 · 20 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Nanotechnology
  • Computational biology
  • Chemistry

  Microfluidics has enabled a new era of cellular and molecular assays due to the small length scales, parallelization, and the modularity of various analysis and actuation functions. Droplet microfluidics, in particular, has been instrumental in providing new tools for biology with its ability to quickly and reproducibly generate drops that act as individual reactors. A notable beneficiary of this technology has been single-cell RNA sequencing, which has revealed new heterogeneities and interactions for the fundamental unit of life. However, viruses far surpass the diversity of cellular life, affect the dynamics of all ecosystems, and are a chronic source of global health crises. Despite their impact on the world, high-throughput and high-resolution viral profiling has been difficult, with conventional methods being limited to population-level averaging, large sample volumes, and few cultivable hosts. Consequently, most viruses have not been identified and studied. Droplet microfluidics holds the potential to address many of these limitations and offers new levels of sensitivity and throughput for virology. This Feature highlights recent efforts that have applied droplet microfluidics to the detection and study of viruses, including for diagnostics, virus-host interactions, and cell-independent virus assays. In combination with traditional virology methods, droplet microfluidics should prove a potent tool toward achieving a better understanding of the most abundant biological species on Earth.

  DOI

• Controllable modulation of precursor reactivity using chemical additives for systematic synthesis of high-quality quantum dots

  Nature Communications · 2020 · 38 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Materials science
  • Nanotechnology
  • Chemistry

  The optical and electronic performance of quantum dots (QDs) are affected by their size distribution and structural quality. Although the synthetic strategies for size control are well established and widely applicable to various QD systems, the structural characteristics of QDs, such as morphology and crystallinity, are tuned mostly by trial and error in a material-specific manner. Here, we show that reaction temperature and precursor reactivity, the two parameters governing the surface-reaction kinetics during growth, govern the structural quality of QDs. For conventional precursors, their reactivity is determined by their chemical structure. Therefore, a variation of precursor reactivity requires the synthesis of different precursor molecules. As a result, existing precursor selections often have significant gaps in reactivity or require synthesis of precursor libraries comprising a large number of variants. We designed a sulfur precursor employing a boron-sulfur bond, which enables controllable modulation of their reactivity using commercially available Lewis bases. This precursor chemistry allows systematic optimization of the reaction temperature and precursor reactivity using a single precursor and grows high-quality QDs from cores of various sizes and materials. This work provides critical insights into the nanoparticle growth process and precursor designs, enabling the systematic preparation of high-quality QD of any sizes and materials.

  DOI

• Rapid, multiplexed detection of biomolecules using electrically distinct hydrogel beads

  Lab on a Chip · 2020 · 18 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Nanotechnology
  • Materials science

  Rapid, low-cost, and multiplexed biomolecule detection is an important goal in the development of effective molecular diagnostics. Our recent work has demonstrated a microfluidic biochip device that can electrically quantitate a protein target with high sensitivity. This platform detects and quantifies a target analyte by counting and capturing micron-sized beads in response to an immunoassay on the bead surface. Existing microparticles limit the technique to the detection of a single protein target and lack the magnetic properties required for separation of the microparticles for direct measurements from whole blood. Here, we report new precisely engineered microparticles that achieve electrical multiplexing and adapt this platform for low-cost and label-free multiplexed electrical detection of biomolecules. Droplet microfluidic synthesis yielded highly-monodisperse populations of magnetic hydrogel beads (MHBs) with the necessary properties for multiplexing the electrical Coulter counting on chip. Each bead population was designed to contain a different amount of the hydrogel material, resulting in a unique electrical impedance signature during Coulter counting, thereby enabling unique identification of each bead. These monodisperse bead populations span a narrow range of sizes ensuring that all can be captured sensitively and selectively under simultaneously flow. Incorporating these newly synthesized beads, we demonstrate versatile and multiplexed biomolecule detection of proteins or DNA targets. This development of multiplexed beads for the electrical detection of biomolecules, provides a critical advancement towards multiplexing the Coulter counting approach and the development of a low cost point-of-care diagnostic sensor.

  DOI

Recent grants

• Chemical toolbox for multiscale, integrative imaging: Connecting cellular gene expression to organ-scale phenotype

  NIH · $1.8M · 2022–2027

• Integrated experimental and statistical tools for ultra-high-throughput spatial transcriptomics

  NIH · $436k · 2023–2026

Frequent coauthors

• Margaret R. Martin

  Tufts University

  31 shared

• John D. Martin

  Materia (United States)

  22 shared

• Moungi G. Bawendi

  21 shared

• Dai Fukumura

  18 shared

• Rakesh K. Jain

  18 shared

• Ryan M. Lanning

  University of Colorado Denver

  16 shared

• Thomas W. Cowell

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  14 shared

• Rashid Bashir

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  14 shared

Labs

• THE HAN LABPI

Awards & honors

• Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D Scholars Award for Science (2021)
• Mark A. Pytosh Scholar (2017)
• KFAS Scholar in Chemistry (2006-2012)
• Samsung Scholar in Chemistry (2006-2011)
• Valedictorian, Summa Cum Laude, Seoul National University (2…

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Jiawei Hanh-146
• Maria T. Grosse Perdekamph-141
• Gan Zhangh-134
• Jeffrey S. Mooreh-130
• Shuming Nieh-128