Congratulations to James Ivey, who was awarded the Virginia Commonwealth University's Respiratory Drug Delivery Peter R. Byron Graduate Student Award at the 2018 RDD conference in Tucson, Arizona.
The award recognizes excellence of research and presentation at the RDD conference.
For his doctoral research, James worked in Professor Reinhard Vehring's laboratory to examine the dynamics of evaporating microdroplets with dissolved or suspended solids, and the mechanisms involved in the transition from a liquid droplet to a solid particle, a process that is important for the production and delivery of therapeutic aerosols to the human lungs. Professor Vehring's group uses experimental and numerical methods to better understand these dynamic aerosols.
"I hope my own work will be of use to researchers developing the next generation of inhaled medicines," says James.
Research for a PhD is never easy. But James's experience was especially challenging.
"During my experimental work I spent a good deal of effort investigating a system that turned out to be beyond the capabilities of myself and my instruments," he says.
Working at the cutting edge of his science and the limits of the available technology was rewarding but also frustrating.
"The most exciting aspects of academia is to use new tools to observe and understand phenomena that no one else has before. That feeling of discovery is unique and very exciting. The challenge was to overcome my own disappointed expectations and to learn from what at the time felt like a failure."
Now that he's finished his PhD, James will take up a position at a small biotech company in Boston, Massachusetts where he will be formulating, processing, and characterizing microparticles for therapeutic delivery of biomolecules.
Congratulations to James on all your successes, even the ones that felt like failures.