Joy Wolfram

Biography

Dr Joy Wolfram is an Associate Professor and leads a nanomedicine and extracellular vesicle research laboratory at the University of Queensland with the goal of developing innovative approaches that bring the next generation of treatments and diagnostics directly to the clinic. Her research program has three main focus areas: 1) develop improved methods for extracellular vesicle isolation from human biofluids, 2) design hybrid drug delivery systems consisting of extracellular vesicles fused with synthetic nanoparticles for a ‘best-of-both-worlds’ approach, and 3) understand the role of extracellular vesicles in breast cancer metastasis. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at Mayo Clinic in Florida, where she led the Nanomedicine and Extracellular Vesicles Laboratory. She also holds affiliate faculty positions in the Department of Nanomedicine at the Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas, the Department of Biology at the University of North Florida, and the Wenzhou Institute of Biomaterials and Engineering in China. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from the University of Helsinki in Finland. In 2016, she completed her Ph.D. in nanotechnology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the past five years, she has authored over 40 publications and received more than 25 scientific awards from seven different countries. She was included in the Amgen Scholars Ten to Watch List, which highlights the best and brightest up-and-comers in science and medicine across 42 countries. Native of Finland, she was selected as one of 12 internationally accomplished Finns, alongside Nobel laureates. She was also listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 in healthcare in 2019. She is a board member and scientific advisor of several companies around the world with a cumulative customer base of over 18 million. She has designed many preclinical nanoparticles for the treatment of various diseases, including cancer. Her goal is to develop innovative nanomedicines that bring the next generation of treatments directly to the clinic. Her mission is also to inspire and support underrepresented minorities in science. She is actively involved in community outreach and scientific education, including serving as the co-chair of the Physical Sciences-Oncology Network Education and Outreach Working Group of the National Cancer Institute in the United States. As a TEDx and Hello Tomorrow speaker she strives to bring science to a wider audience.

Awards