Cecilia Leal, an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, is a recipient of the 2016 National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award. The award recognizes bold ideas from some of the nation’s most promising early-career scientists. Leal’s work aims to introduce a new paradigm in the field of nanomaterials for medicine by revealing how the nanoparticle structure affects and even dictates their capacity to deliver cargo to cells.