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Doctoral Student Tops IdeaFunding 2010 Innovation in Research Competition
Xenia Kachur, a graduate
student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Interdisciplinary Program at
the UA, is working on a project
to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs to cancer tissues without harming healthy body cells.
Photo by Beatriz Verdugo, courtesy UANews.
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January 2011
By Liz Warren-Pederson
Third-year doctoral student Xenia Kachur — whose focus is biomedical engineering — topped the Innovation in Research Competition at the IdeaFunding 2010 conference in October. The competition was sponsored by the Early-to-Candidate (E2C) Unit of Global Research and Development at sanofi-aventis, US.
Two local entrepreneurs and members of Southern Arizona investor group Desert Angels, along with Paul August, Ph.D. (US head, E2C Unit), judged the research abstracts during the event. The competition challenged participants to put forward brief abstracts describing translational research that offered potential solutions for patient treatment. “My research fit their description, so I developed a proposal,” Kachur said.
IdeaFunding showcased twelve finalists. Participants were judged not only on how innovative the science was, but also on personal and visual presentation, and the ability to address questions from the reviewers.
Kachur’s research into nano-scale drug delivery for cancer therapy formed the basis of her entry into the competition. “I was already planning to attend IdeaFunding as a student of the McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship,” she explained. “Then my doctoral advisor forwarded information about the competition and supported my participation.”
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