People

Principal Investigator

Racheff Faculty Scholar
Materials Science and Engineering
Carle Illinois College of Medicine
Materials Research Laboratory
Beckman Institute
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

E-mail: cecilial@illinois.edu
Phone: 217-300-1955 | Fax: 217-333-2736
Office: 204 MSEB

twitter: Follow @leal_prof

Administrative Support

Karyn Traum

Coordinator of Research Programs

E-mail: traum@illinois.edu

Postdoctoral Researchers

Teshani Kumarage, E-mail: teshanik@illinois.edu

Endosomal escape of lipid-based nanoparticles comprising Gaussian curvature lipids

Ph.D. Virginia Tech

B.S. University of Peradeniya

Graduate Students

Lining Zheng, E-mail: liningz2@illinois.edu

Evaluating endosomal release of lipid-nucleic acid constructs

B.S. Cornell University

Nurila Kambar, E-mail: nkambar2@illinois.edu

Studying hybrid materials at the colloidal scale

B.S. Alfred University

Kyungwon Ko, E-mail: ko25@illinois.edu

Investigating lipid droplet dynamics in obesity

M.S. Seoul National University

Max Baliga, E-mail: mbaliga2@illinois.edu

Investigating the effects of various lipids on lipid nanoparticle gene delivery

B.S. Northwestern University

Bengü Süeda Şengül, E-mail: bsengl2@illinois.edu

Studying polymer-lipid hybrid membranes in various aspects

B.S. Sabancı University

Satyajit Panda, E-mail: sp96@illinois.edu

National Institute of Technology Rourkela

Undergraduate Students


Alice Gao	Shane Spatol	Sophia Weeks	Lily Kluge

Perla Bran

Leallies (Leal Group Alumni)


Lily Li	Yookyung Go – Postdoc at Massachusetts Institute of Technology	Jacob Rueben – Scientist at ReCode Therapeutics	Zhengzhong (Kevin) Tan – Investigator I at CSL Seqirus

Marilyn Porras Gomez – Sr. Research Specialist at Dow Chemical	Sarith Bandara – Engineer at Epic Systems	Emily Chen – Research Scientist at Eli Lilly and Company	Dylan Steer – Product Development Scientist at Oterra


Mijung Kim – ECE Graduate Student at UIUC	Sherry Leung – Research Fellow at CityU, Hong Kong	Hojun Kim – Postdoc at KIST, South Korea	Minjee Kang – Postdoc at MSE, Cornell

Undergrad Leallies


Priya Bharath	Prana Ghatraju	Harpreet Auby	Hannah Meiselman


Tom Molley	Ibukun Ajifolokun – PhD student at MSE, Stanford University	Julia Dreher-Threlkeld – PhD student at MSE, Northwestern University	Nathaniel Anderson


Zoe Mihevc	Michelle Ru