Medical Doctor Betty Y.S. Kim wants to improve service to her patients.

For this reason, coupled with an interest in research, this doctor was inspired to pursue a PhD in bionanotechnology in the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, where she will be the first Canadian surgical resident trained in this emerging field.

Graduating with a MD from McMaster University in 2002, Kim decided to meld her two areas of specialty in the hopes of improving patient care in neurosurgery and perhaps also writing and illustrating a children’s book about the brain.

“In the near future, biomedical nanotechnology will affect every clinician involved in patient care,” says Kim.

“Unlike many other areas of research, nanotechnology and its applications are truly interdisciplinary. Diverse expertise is required to design, synthesize, and characterize nanostructures based on their size, shape and material composition. By understanding the physical properties of these nanostructures, novel tools can be developed for practical applications in medicine.”

While completing an Honour’s Bachelor of Science in Cell Biology and Anatomy at McGill University, Kim participated in the University’s study abroad program and travelled to England to study post-colonial literature at Oxford University and biomedical sciences at King’s College London. Kim graduated at the top of her class as a Dean’s Scholar and received the Golden Key National Scholar award.

She did not enter medical school with the intention of pursuing an academic career. As a medical student, she worked with a team of neuroscientists, neurologists and molecular biologists at Johns Hopkins University, where she says her interest in neuroscience research flourished. The following year she worked with clinical scientists at Harvard University and was involved in basic science research resulting in clinical trials involving 24 academic centres across North America. The study was published in Nature in 2002 and has been cited more than 350 times.

Kim completed three years of her neurosurgical residency training at the University of Ottawa before transferring to U of T to pursue her research interests in bionanotechnology. She is currently working with Dr. James Rutka, Chair of Neurosurgery at U of T and IBBME Professor Warren Chan on the delivery, targeting and imaging of malignant brain tumours using multiplexed nanoparticles.

During the past two years as a PhD student in IBBME, she has garnered numerous international and national awards and distinctions totaling more than $186,000 in research funding, among which includes the prestigious AANS Neurosurgical Research and Education Fellowship, NSERC graduate student award, and The Hospital for Sick Children’s Research Training Award for excellence in research. She recently published in the March 2008 issue of Nature Nanotechnology along with co-author and fellow IBBME PhD student Wen Jiang and supervisors Drs. Rutka and Chan.

After completing her PhD, Kim will still need to undertake two more years of neurosurgical training to finish her six-year residency training program.

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