March 6, 2024
Yutian Ma, Ph.D. and current postdoctoral researcher, has studied around the world, but found his home in Assistant Professor Owen Fenton’s lab.
Ma has studied biomedical engineering in China, Australia, England and Singapore. “Working with different people across different cultures helped me realize that science is like a unifying language. It also exposed me to a lot of new insights and ideas,” said Ma.
Fenton and Ma first worked together at the National University of Singapore in 2021. At the time, Fenton was looking for an excellent postdoc and reached out to his network who recommended Ma. After their initial meeting, Fenton knew he was a rockstar and offered him the job on the spot.
“Yutian is a talented experimentalist and can generate powerful sets of data. Also, his ability to sit down, think critically, and chat about science in an informal capacity brings out his creativity,” said Fenton, Ph.D.
Luckily for Fenton, the feeling was mutual and the two have now worked together for three years, including a move across the world to the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2022.
A postdoc moving with their principal investigator’s (PI) lab to another country isn’t uncommon but speaks to the solid foundation Fenton and Ma have built together through their research. When Fenton started his lab, building an effective team was his top priority.
“If you find the right people, they can solve complex and important problems. I find the most interesting questions interdisciplinary in nature and that’s why you need a team of great people with different research backgrounds like Yutian,” he said.
Creative is also a word Fenton uses to describe the environment of his lab and it’s reflected in the way he mentors his students – by advocating for brainstorming sessions and group recharging.
“Dr. Fenton provides a space where you’re allowed to express your own ideas and have him support you through the research process. His mentorship has helped me grow, and, because of his influence, I want to incorporate the same mentoring style in the future,” said Ma.
Bringing each of their strengths and backgrounds, Ma in engineering and Fenton in drug delivery and synthetic chemistry, the duo has found success.
The lab’s research involves developing safer and more effective RNA based therapies, specifically for cancer vaccines. With support from the National Institutes of Health Trailblazer R21 Award, they are creating better cancer vaccines with ties to a lot of Ma’s research.
Some of his research includes showing how to slow melanoma growth and increase survival rates of animals that are treated with these cancer vaccines. Ma and Fenton have also recently been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society twice. First, a study showing that oxygen levels of cells are tied to RNA success and the second being a follow-up piece outlining a strategy for this discovery.
Ma has settled into Fenton’s lab for now but hopes to one day recreate the same environment in his own lab.
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