Wassana Yantasee: Council of Outstanding Early Career Engineers - 2014

Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, OHSU. School of Medicine Portland, Ore.

Wassana Yantasee graduated from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand with a B.S. in 1995 and then came to the  United States, were she holds three degrees from Oregon State. She earned a Ph.D. and M.B.A. simultaneously, doing research by day and business coursework by night.Even though she grew up in Thailand, Yantasee found Oregon State to be a perfect fit.

“Although I was far from home, I felt at home at OSU,” she said. “The university has great student diversity, and I had opportunities to make friends from all over the world.”After completing her Ph.D. requirements, Yantasee launched a research career. From 2001 to 2009, she worked as a research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Today, she is an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine, where she researches the development of engineered nanomaterials to diagnose, prevent, or treat diseases. In addition, she is the president of a small biotech company called PDX harmaceuticals. 

Yantasee is proud to hire fellow Oregon State graduates, and to be able to contribute to prevention and treatment of deadly diseases such as cancer and toxic metal exposure.“I’m most proud of being able to give all my Ph.D. students (currently there are four of them) free education  from my research grants,” she said.“Also, my small business company, PDX Pharmaceuticals, has received a fast-track Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract award from the National Cancer Institute to develop a new drug that will potentially  treat cancer that becomes resistant to the standard-of-care drugs.”