Rate My Professor Gabe Kwong

Gabe A. Kwong is the Robert A. Milton Endowed Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory School of Medicine. He earned his B.S. in Bioengineering with highest honors from the University of California, Berkeley, his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the California Institute of Technology under Professor James R. Heath, and completed postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor Sangeeta N. Bhatia. Joining Georgia Tech faculty in 2014, Dr. Kwong advanced to full professor and directs the Laboratory for Synthetic Immunity, establishing leadership in engineering through innovative biomedical technologies.

Dr. Kwong's research bridges synthetic immunity and medicine, developing in vivo biosensors for early cancer detection and immune cell programming technologies like protease-activated nanosensors and synthetic biomarkers for urinary monitoring. His lab engineers enhancements for CAR T cell therapies, including lipid nanoparticle delivery of synthetic antigens to sensitize solid tumors. Notable publications include “Sensitizing solid tumors to CAR-mediated cytotoxicity by lipid nanoparticle delivery of synthetic antigens” (Nature Cancer, 2025), “AND-gated protease-activated nanosensors for programmable detection of anti-tumour immunity” (Nature Nanotechnology, 2025), “In vivo mRNA delivery to virus-specific T cells by light-induced ligand exchange of MHC class I antigen-presenting nanoparticles” (Science Advances, 2022), and “Synthetic Biomarkers: A 21st century path to early cancer detection” (Nature Reviews Cancer, 2021). Holding over 40 patents and co-founding two biotechnology companies, his contributions feature highly cited works in Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, and Science Translational Medicine. Honors encompass the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award ($1.5 million, 2016), NIH Pioneer Award, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, Sigma Xi Best Faculty Paper Award (2020), and leadership of the $49.5 million ARPA-H Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas project for multi-cancer early detection.