Urara Hasegawa received her B.S. and M.Eng. in Applied Chemistry from Waseda University, Japan. She earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Science from Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Japan, and then, worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Professor Jeffrey Hubbell at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. She joined Department of Applied Chemistry at Osaka University, Japan, as an assistant professor in 2011, and then moved to Department of Chemical Engineering at Kansas State University in 2017. In 2020, she joined Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State. She is associated with the Penn State Intercollege Graduate Degree Program (IGDP) in Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) where a multitude of perspectives and cross-disciplinary collaboration within research is highly valued. Graduate students in the IGDP in MatSE may work with faculty members from across Penn State.

Hasegawa’s research focuses on the development of polymeric nanomaterials for controlled delivery of drug and bioactive signaling molecules. Her particular interest is on endogenous generation of reactive oxygen species and gasotransmitters such as nitric oxide, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide and their biological activities. Currently, her group is developing polymeric nanomaterials that can generate, scavenge or respond to these molecules. Her work includes design and synthesis of polymeric nanomaterials using various polymerization techniques, such as reversible addition-fragmentation transfer (RAFT) polymerization and aqueous dispersion polymerization, as well as biological evaluation of these nanomaterials in cell culture and biological systems. These polymeric nano-platforms are useful not only for therapeutic applications but also for unveiling the physiological/pathological roles of these tiny bioactive molecules in the human body.