Santiago Correa Wins Prestigious Beckman Young Investigator Award

Santiago Correa, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has been named a recipient of the 2025 Beckman Young Investigator Award and will receive $600,000 in funding across four years. Out of 300 applications, Correa was one of only 10 researchers across the nation to be honored.

The award is given to young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers. The program provides research support to foster the invention of methods, instruments and materials. The goal? To open up new avenues of scientific research.

"This support couldn’t have come at a better time,” says Correa. “My lab and I are grateful to have the generous support of the Beckman Foundation to continue pioneering new technologies to enhance cancer immunotherapy."

Over the four years, Correa and his lab will focus on cell-derived nanotechnology and biomaterials to develop next-generation cancer immunotherapies. By designing materials that mimic how cells naturally communicate, the team aims to reprogram the immune system to recognize and eliminate tumors.

Correa’s research explores how nanoscale materials can be derived from living cells, specifically how engineered extracellular vesicles can be used to send immune signals that reprogram the body’s natural defenses against cancer. These vesicles act as tiny biological messengers, carrying complex molecular instructions between cells. By combining the immune-interfacing strengths of natural vesicles with the tunable features of synthetic materials, like durability and controlled signal release, Correa’s lab aims to build programmable therapies that communicate with the immune system more precisely than current technologies.

Rather than relying on complex cell therapies that require extracting and modifying a patient’s immune cells, this new approach seeks to train immune cells in place. The long-term goal is to develop off-the-shelf nanomaterials that are adaptable to a patient’s individual immune profile, making immunotherapy faster to deploy, easier to scale, and more precisely targeted to each person’s unique disease.

The Beckman Young Investigator Award will enable Correa and his team to pursue this high-risk, high-reward direction at the intersection of synthetic biology, immunology, and nanotechnology. His work could ultimately lay the foundation for a new class of materials that help the immune system recognize and respond to tumors that have previously evaded treatment.

Lead Photo Caption: Santiago Correa, assistant professor of biomedical engineering

Lead Photo Credit: David Dini/Columbia Engineering