This document summarizes a student's design of a photodelivery drug system using gold nanostars covered with polyacrylic acid modified with β-cyclodextrin. The system aims to have nanoparticles with strong near-infrared absorption and high light-to-heat conversion. β-cyclodextrin would store the drug (e.g. doxorubicin), and the coating would provide stability. The student's experiments show the system has over 90% drug loading capacity and can release 6% of the drug under near-infrared light irradiation.