A hub for international and industry partnerships, KCITY takes on global challenges

Ultrapure water is used in numerous phases of developing semiconductors, and requires the highest grade of water purity. And the amount of water needed for these processes can be staggering. It is estimated that over 1.8 million gallons of source water needs to be treated to produce ultrapure water required for a single 12-inch wafer. Despite Korean companies leading the global market in semiconductor manufacturing, they still depend on imported materials and technologies for ultrapure water production. 

“If the semiconductor industry requires tons of water starting from fresh water, that means it's a water resource distribution problem,” Kim said.

To that end, he aims to create technologies that can utilize alternative water sources such as saline or reuse water to produce ultrapure water. To do so, Kim will optimize ultraviolet oxidation based on extensive computer simulation and bench-scale demonstration. He will also develop a high-efficiency reverse osmosis membrane process.

Mark Saltzman, the Sterling Professor of Biomedical Engineering, is working with Ingenium Therapeutics in Korea to create a technology for producing anti-cancer CAR-NK cells directly in the body. CAR-NK cells are natural killer (NK) cells engineered with chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) for effective recognition and killing of immune-evasive cancer cells. This is a novel form of cancer immunotherapy garnering significant attention in the biomedical field for its potential to address the limitations of CAR-T therapy. Ingenium Therapeutics is a biopharma startup that specializes in the CAR-NK technology.

“Our role in this collaborative project involves the synthesis of inert polymeric nanoparticles that package the CAR-encoding messenger RNA that Ingenium Therapeutics designed and the establishment of an NK cell-selective delivery strategy,” Saltzman said. His lab has developed an approach in which they assemble a distinctive set of proteins on the surface of the nanoparticles in a way that causes them to accumulate at a higher level in tumors. 

A team that includes Fengnian Xia, the Tso-Ping Ma Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, aims to develop ultra-low-power, high-reliability gas sensor technology capable of detecting carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane gases. This technology uses lasers that pass through the air. Certain gases absorb certain infrared wavelengths of the light. Xia’s lab is focusing on the infrared photodetector needed to detect the intensity of the light in different conditions. 

The researchers innovatively combine photon and thermal detection mechanisms to enhance photodetection performance within this specific spectral range. The team is also investigating the transistor effect to directly amplify the photoresponse to enable the detection of low-intensity light for high-sensitivity and low-power consumption.