Jin Kim Montclare, a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows on March 26, an individual honor considered one of the highest professional distinctions in her field.
AIMBE is a non-profit organization that works to recognize those who have made contributions to the medical and biological engineering community in academia, industry and government. Currently, AIMBE’s college of fellows includes around 2,000 individuals. Every year, fellows representing the top 2% of the medical and biological engineering community are nominated by their peers.
“It’s been an honor to receive this distinction from my peers,” Montclare said in an interview with WSN. “Knowing that I was nominated by my colleagues, people who are at the top of their field, has been really great.”
Montclare has worked to develop non-surgical techniques for treating cancer, diabetes, and other conditions. She is best known for developing a way to track the delivery of cancer fighting drugs through magnetic resonance imagining (MRI) scans.
Montclare also founded the Montclare Lab for Protein Engineering and Molecular Design, a research lab at Tandon where she mentors undergraduates and graduates on their research. Montclare said she finds mentoring to be one of the most rewarding parts of being a professor.
“I think that anyone going into this field should seek out people to learn from,” Montclare said. “It has always been really insightful for me to hear about what students want to so that I can help foster that interest.”
As an undergraduate, Montclare found her mentors to be incredibly influential on her career path. As the director of the school’s Convergence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute, she works to help students identify existing problems for consumers and create innovations or ideas for businesses to fix them.
“We’re looking to see how we can use our research to help more people and to directly solve issues that exist in society,” Montclare said. “By considering the demand first, we can help inform projects that will be useful.”
Tandon Dean Jelena Kovačević, the first woman to hold that position, expressed her excitement that Montclare’s work at Tandon has been recognized by such an elite institution as AIMBE for her achievements in engineering remarkable macromolecular systems. Beyond her professional success, Kovačević sees Montclare as a leader in diversity in a field that has a history of failing to represent women — in 2010, women made up only 13% of the engineers in the United States.
“Professor Montclare is a mentor, a leader in STEM education and an inspiration, especially to young women discovering math, science and engineering for the first time,” Kovačević wrote in a statement to WSN. “She embodies all that we aim to achieve here at NYU Tandon.”
Email Mansee Khurana at [email protected].
