Rebekah Drezek, PhD
Stanley C. Moore Assistant Professor of Bioengineering
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rice University

Educational path
I received my BSE in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Duke University in 1996. While at Duke, I did research first in cell biology and genetics and then in a biomedical engineering lab developing automated methods for extracting heart chamber volumes from real-time 3D ultrasound data. I moved back to Texas in 1996 and received my MS in electrical engineering in 1998 and my PhD in 2001. I then spent one year as a postdocs at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Special training for nanotechnology
I don't have any formal training in nanotechnology. I didn't do anything in nanotechnology until I set foot on the Rice campus. However, as a biomedical engineer with three degrees in electrical engineering and prior experience in imaging, photonics, clinical medicine, and biology, I was relatively well-positioned to enter the field. However, I have had to learn the chemistry side of nano a bit on the fly.

Tips/Advice to jumpstart a career in nanotechnology
Make sure you have a strong background in quantum mechanics and organic and physical chemistry. These are the areas I really regret not having more formal coursework in. Don't worry if you don't have previous experience. It is such a young field that most of us who work in the area have all of our degrees and training in different areas.

Why did you choose the field of nanotechnology?
My labs conduct research aimed at developing new photonics technologies to improve women's health care. We are particularly focused on developing novel approaches to detecting breast and ovarian cancer at their earliest stages when treatment is most effective. This is especially critical for ovarian cancer. As we learn more about molecular markers for these diseases, we ideally want to find a way to detect these markers in vivo* without having to remove tissue from the body. That is where nanotechnology comes in. Our ability to control the optical properties of nanoparticles by modifying the size and materials they are made of lets us develop ultra-bright, molecular-specific, imaging agents we can tune to wavelengths where tissue is most transparent, potentially allowing us to detect very low levels of markers of interest deep within tissue.

How did you first get into nanotechnology?
When I came to Rice, one of the first things I came across was (model of) a buckyball four feet high. At the time, I had no clue what this strange soccer ball looking construction was, but I realized I had better start learning really fast. From a research perspective, I heard Naomi Halas, inventor of nanoshells, give a seminar and I became interested in the potential of nanoshells, a type of core-shell nanostructure, as contrast agents for optical imaging.

What is it like to work in nanotechnology?
It is a really exciting field to work in because it is so young, so full of potential, so rapidly evolving. It is a field where really, really important things are going to happen over the next decade or two with the potential to dramatically impact pressing world problems.

*In Vivo, Latin for within the living