Jongwon Lim Receives BMES-CMBE Postdoctoral Researcher Travel Award
“Receiving the BMES-CMBE Postdoctoral Researcher Travel Award is a tremendous honor for me,” said Lim. “It recognizes not only our group’s efforts in advancing next-generation diagnostics, but also the broader importance of rapid, accessible testing technologies for global health.”
Lim wants to emphasize the network of mentors and colleagues that have helped him along his journey. “Among this year’s Rising Stars awardees are my mentors Professor Hua Wang at Illinois Bioengineering [and Material Science and Engineering] and Professor Jina Ko at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, among the postdoctoral travel award recipients is Tamara Rossy, who is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of my mentor Professor Ritu Raman at MIT.
https://bioengineering.illinois.edu/news/jongwon-lim-award
Lim named Trailblazer in Engineering Fellow
“It felt like having a direct neural link to decades of faculty experience — absorbing their knowledge, wisdom, and practical advice for navigating academia.”
Jongwong Lim already has a successful academic career, but he plans to take that even further. The Trailblazers in Engineering program from Purdue University aims to increase the amount of future engineering faculty across the nation.
Uncertain Futures and Connections Reimagined: Connecting Technologies
“The KFAS-Salzburg Global Leadership Initiative aims to equip Korean and global leaders with the necessary skills to address the challenges posed by our rapidly changing world. Through a series of virtual sessions and an annual gathering in Salzburg, the Initiative is a global knowledge platform for mutual learning and exchange, where leaders at junior and senior levels, can share the current global and local issues they are facing, and develop and disseminate innovative action plans.”
https://issuu.com/salzburgglobal/docs/uncertain_futures_and_connections_reimagined_conn
Professor Joe Greene Postdoctoral Fellow Program
“I am deeply honored to be awarded the Joe Greene Postdoctoral Fellowship. This support allows me to advance my research on rapid diagnostic technologies for bloodstream infections, tackling key challenges associated with future pandemics and an aging population. By leveraging an innovative blood drying technique, my goal is to accelerate sepsis diagnostics by a factor of 100, reducing detection time from several days to less than 30 minutes. This breakthrough has the potential to transform patient care, particularly in resource-limited settings where timely diagnosis can be critical to saving lives.”
Hear From and Read About SLAS Innovation Award Winners
“I hold the belief that scientists worldwide should harbor expansive ambitions and collaborate across disciplines to address global challenges,” Lim says. “My aim is to glean significant insights and aspirations from seasoned researchers, undergo personal growth and ultimately emerge as a global leader capable of guiding numerous researchers in solving major issues.”
“When I need to overcome a challenge in research, I focus on actionable steps to move forward,” says Lim. He enjoys his morning ritual of rising early, establishing daily goals as personal standards for success, and pursuing them. “I engage in reading, studying, thinking or researching with the clearest mind I can maintain. I believe that if a problem isn’t resolved today, persistence will lead to a solution tomorrow”
Bioengineers at the Global Young Scientists Summit 2023
“I was fortunate to learn from Sir David Klenerman, who won the Millennium Technology Prize, the significance of a resilient mindset in the pursuit of impactful research,” Jongwon said. “I also asked him how he was able to form collaborations with such great people, and he answered that the best way is to simply ask. He mentioned that it’s kind of like a social experiment, where you ask a lot of people just to see what the results are. Afterward, I actually did the same thing to him: I emailed him and asked him to become my mentor. He responded and said yes.”
Jongwon has another piece of advice for graduate students considering applying to participate in GYSS: they should think about what they’re bringing back home—and not in terms of souvenirs. “It’s worth considering what you can bring on in your backpack on your return flight from Singapore…think about how you can use this new information to make a meaningful impact in your field. Selection as a representative of UIUC entails a responsibility to create a greater impact on society upon return.”
The team recently published an article on this bloodstream infection diagnosis technology in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
A team from the Department of Bioengineering, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, and Carle Foundation Hospital has developed a groundbreaking new approach for detection of pathogens from blood. Bioengineering alumni Anurup Ganguli and Ariana Mostafa, current bioengineering PhD student Jongwon Lim, bioengineering professor Enrique Valera, Carle Foundation Hospital collaborators James Kumar, Karen White, and others were part of the team led by bioengineering professor and Grainger College Dean Rashid Bashir.
Baxter Young Investigator Awards – 2022 First-tier winner (1 of 6 winners from North America among applicants, including graduate students and postdocs)
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign bioengineering PhD student Jongwon Lim recently received prestigious Baxter Young Investigator Awards for the innovative efforts in the field of bioengineering. Jongwon said, “In the process of applying for the award, I was able to reflect on the values and goals of my research. This award will enable me, as a bioengineer, to continue to make contributions to life and humanity through translational research.”
Outstanding Oral Presentation with travel awards in the 5th GradBMES 2022 Bioengineering Graduate Student Research Symposium
News from The Grainger College of Engineering, Bioengineering Department
Portable, point-of-care COVID-19 test discerns alpha variant from earlier strains
“Our study shows that it is possible to test for variants of the same coronavirus strain in a single point-of-care test that takes 30 minutes using a portable handheld device,” Bashir said. “The new test is scalable to suit future pandemics, COVID-19 or otherwise, and could be used at home or other settings.”
Co-lead authors of the paper were graduate students Jongwon Lim and Robert Stavins.
jongwonlim.com 
