Invited Speakers
Deji Akinwande
University of Texas at Austin
Deji Akinwande is an Endowed Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on 2D materials, pioneering device innovations from lab towards applications. He received the PhD degree from Stanford University in 2009. Prof. Akinwande has been honored with the 2018 Fulbright Specialist Award, 2017 Bessel-Humboldt Research Award, the U.S Presidential PECASE award, the inaugural Gordon Moore Inventor Fellow award, the inaugural IEEE Nano Geim and Novoselov Graphene Prize, the IEEE “Early Career Award” in Nanotechnology, the NSF CAREER award, several DoD Young Investigator awards, and was a past recipient of fellowships from the Kilby/TI, Ford Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 3M, and Stanford DARE Initiative. His research achievements have been featured by Nature news, Time and Forbes magazine, BBC, CNN, Discover magazine, Wall Street Journal, and many media outlets. He serves as an Editor ACS Nano and Nature NPJ 2D Materials & Applications, and on the editorial board for Science. He is the co-Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on 2D electronics, and was a past Chair of the 2018/2019 Device Research Conference (DRC), and the Nano-device sub-committee for the 2018 IEEE IEDM Conference. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Physical Society (APS), and the African Academy of Sciences.
Kiana Aran
Keck Institute
Dr. Kiana Aran is an associate professor of bioengineering at Keck Institute in US, as well as cofounder and chief scientific officer at cardeabio, a biotechnology company developing bio-integrated electronic chips for precision medicine. She is also the cofounder of CRISPR QC, a biotechnology company that develops analytical tools for CRISPR. She is a pioneer of combining CRISPR with modern electronics. She received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University and continued her postdoctoral studies in bioengineering at UC Berkeley. She is a recipient of the National Institutes of Health postdoctoral training fellowship at the Buck Institute for Age Research and is a consultant for the Gates Foundation. Her efforts have been recognized within the scientific community by the Clinical OMICs 10 under 40 Award, Athena Pinnacle Award in Life Sciences, NSF Career award, Nature Research Awards for Inspiring Women in Science: Scientific Achievement Category’s Overall Winner in 2021 and Distinguished Engineering Medal of Excellence from Rutgers University in 2022. Dr. Aran is also the recipient of multiple NIH RO1, DARPA, Gate foundation grants and awards from private sector to develop the next generation of electronic biosensors for precision medicine.
Yoon-Kyoung Cho
UNIST
Yoon-Kyoung Cho is currently a full professor in Biomedical Engineering at UNIST and a group leader in the Center for Soft and Living Matter at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Republic of Korea. She received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999, having obtained her M.S. and B.S. in Chemical Engineering from POSTECH in 1994 and 1992, respectively. She worked as a senior researcher (1999–2008) at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), where she participated in the development of in vitro diagnostic devices for biomedical applications. Since she joined UNIST in 2008, she served as the chair of the school of Nano-Bioscience and Chemical Engineering (2008–2014) and the School of Life Sciences (2014–2015), and the director of World Class University (2009–2013) and BK21 (2013–2015) programs. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK), an associate editor of the journal ‘Lab on a chip’, a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and a board of directors of the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS). She served as a scientific advisory board member of Clinomics and Labspinner, S. Korea. Her research interests range from fundamental sciences to translational research in microfluidics and nanomedicine. Current research topics include a lab-on-a-disc for detecting rare cells and extracellular biomarkers, quantitative analysis of single cells and cell migration, and systems analysis of intercellular communication. http://fruits.unist.ac.kr
Aram Chung
Korea University
Dr. Aram Chung is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering Department at Korea University (KU), and a CEO/founder of MxT Biotech, the lab’s spinout company. He joined KU in Fall 2017 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY, USA where he was an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Department from 2013 to 2017. Before RPI, he conducted postdoctoral studies (2011-2013) in Bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) under Prof. Dino Di Carlo. He received his M.S. (2009) and Ph.D. (2011) in Mechanical Engineering (minoring Biomedical Engineering) from Cornell University under Prof. David Erickson and a B.S. (2006) with honors in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University (SNU). Among other honors and recognitions, he is the finalist for the SLAS Innovation Award (2020), was awarded the BioChip Journal Award (2021), the KOSMBE Young Investigator Award (2019), the Early Career Award from the BioChip Society (2018), the Seok-Top Teaching Award from KU (2019 & 2017), the KSEA Young Investigator Award (2017), the RPI Class of 1951 Outstanding Teaching Award (2016), the UCLA Chancellor’s Award for Postdoctoral Research (2013), the Grand (2010) and the 1st (2009) Poster Prizes at ASME-IMECE, the Samsung HumanTech Paper Silver Award (2008), and the Best Poster Award at the CNF 30th Anniversary Symposium.
Petra Dittrich
ETH Zürich
Prof. Petra S. Dittrich is Associate Professor for Bioanalytics at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zürich. She develops microfluidic devices for bioanalytical and diagnostic applications. Her research interests focus currently on single cell analysis, lipid membrane studies and engineering of minimal cells. She studied Chemistry at Bielefeld University (Germany) and Universidad de Salamanca (Spain). She earned her PhD degree at the Max Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (MPI Göttingen, Germany) in 2003. After a year as postdoctoral fellow at the MPI Göttingen, she was postdoc at the Institute for Analytical Sciences (ISAS Dortmund, Germany). From 2008, she was Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences (ETH Zurich). For research stays, she visited the Cornell University (Ithaca, USA, in 2002) and the University of Tokyo (Japan, in 2005). She received among others awards the prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC, from 2008-2014) as well as the ERC Consolidator Grant (2016-2021). Prof. Dittrich is Associate Editor for Lab on a Chip.
Sam Emaminejad
UCLA
Professor Sam Emaminejad is an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at UCLA, the founder and director of the Interconnected & Integrated Bioelectronics Lab (I²BL), and an elected senior member of the National Academy of Inventors. Sam received his BASc (2009) and MS/PhD (2011/2014) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and Stanford University, respectively. Prior to joining UCLA, he was a joint-postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley and Stanford School of Medicine. Professor Emaminejad has received numerous honors and awards, including the NSF CAREER, NSF Smart and Connected Health (SCH), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) scholarship, Microsoft Merit, the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation’s NARSAD Young Investigator award, PhRMA Research Starter Grant (Translational Medicine and Therapeutics Program), PATHS-UP Faculty Innovation, Young Alumni Achievement Medal (University of Waterloo), UCLA Innovation Fund, and CNSI Noble Family Innovation Fund. Also, he has been awarded a “Distinguished Young Investigator Award” for leading a multi-center program on remote patient monitoring with UCLA, Intermountain Healthcare and Stanford School of Medicine. Professor Emaminejad’s research has been featured by the National Science Foundation and National Academy of Engineering and widely reported by various media outlets, including Nature, Science, BBC, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, etc.
Polly Fordyce
Stanford
Polly Fordyce is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Genetics and Institute Scholar of ChEM-H at Stanford, where her laboratory focuses on developing and applying new microfluidic platforms for quantitative and high-throughput biophysics, biochemistry, and single-cell biology. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with undergraduate degrees in physics and biology before moving to Stanford University, where she earned a Ph.D. in physics for work with Professor Steve Block developing instrumentation and assays for single-molecule studies of kinesin motor proteins. For her postdoctoral research, she worked with Professor Joe DeRisi to develop a new microfluidic platform for understanding how transcription factors recognize and bind their DNA targets as well as a new technology for bead-based multiplexing. She is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, an NIH New Innovator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, and she is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator.
Steven C. George
UC Davis
Steven C. George, M.D., Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Davis. He received his bachelors degree in chemical engineering in 1987 from Northwestern University, M.D. from the University of Missouri School of Medicine in 1991, and Ph.D. from the University of Washington in chemical engineering in 1995. He was on the faculty at the University of California, Irvine for 19 years (1995-2014) where he pursued a range of research interests including pulmonary gas exchange, lung mechanics, vascularizing engineered tissues, and microphysiological systems (“organ-on-a-chip”). The NIH FIRST award in 1998 and the CAREER and Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the National Science Foundation in 1999 have previously recognized his work. While at UCI, he served as the William J. Link Professor and founding Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering (2002-2009), the founding Director of the Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology (2009-2014), and was the founding PI on a T32 predoctoral training grant from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute entitled “Cardiovascular Applied Research and Entrepreneurship” (CARE). In 2014 he transitioned to become the Elvera and William Stuckenberg Professor and Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and in 2017 moved to the UC Davis. He became Chair of the department in January 2019. He was elected a fellow in the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2007, a fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2017, a fellow of the International Academy for Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE) in 2021, has published more than 150 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and has co-founded an early and active start-up company (Aracari Biosciences in 2019). His work is currently funded by grants from the NIH that focus on creating microfluidic models of the cardiac, pancreas, bone marrow, cancer, and immune microenvironments using induced pluripotent stem cell and microfabrication technology.
Keisuke Goda
University of Tokyo
Keisuke Goda is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo, an adjunct professor in the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UCLA. He obtained a B.A. degree from UC Berkeley summa cum laude in 2001 and a Ph.D. from MIT in 2007, both in physics. At MIT, he worked on the development of gravitational-wave detectors in the LIGO group which led to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. After several years of work on high-speed imaging and microfluidics at Caltech and UCLA, he joined the University of Tokyo as a professor. His research group focuses on the development of serendipity-enabling technologies based on molecular imaging and spectroscopy together with microfluidics and computational analytics to push the frontier of science (http://www.goda.chem.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp). He currently leads Serendipity Lab, a global network of scientists who aim to achieve Louis Pasteur’s statement “Chance favors the prepared mind” (http://www.serendipitylab.org). He has published numerous papers, filed numerous patents, and received numerous awards and honor such as Japan Academy Medal, Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship, and Philipp Franz von Siebold Award.
Umut A. Gurkan
Case Western Reserve University
Umut A. Gurkan, Ph.D., is a professor in the Case School of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, and he is the director of the Case Biomanufacturing and Microfabrication Laboratory. Dr. Gurkan holds a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Purdue University and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gurkan’s group aims to improve global equitable access to diagnostics and personalized health. Dr. Gurkan is a leader in cellular biomechanics, clinical microfluidics, biosensors, and in the translation of point-of-care and in vitro diagnostics for blood disorders and cancer. Dr. Gurkan is a member of the Global Gene Therapy Initiative (GGTI), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), and American Society of Hematology (ASH). Dr. Gurkan is a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), a member of the New Voices in Science, Engineering and Medicine Program by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), and a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
Hee-Sun Han
Seoul National University, Korea
Professor Hee-Sun Han obtained her B.S. degree in Chemistry at Seoul National University, Korea, where she graduated summa cum laude as a Valedictorian. After college, she moved to Cambridge, USA, to pursue graduate work in Physical Chemistry at MIT as a Samsung and KASF fellow. Under the guidance of Prof. Moungi G. Bawendi, she developed quantum dot-based intravital imaging platforms. She then moved to Harvard to work with Prof. David A. Weitz as a postdoctoral fellow, where she developed a drop-based microfluidic platform for high throughput genome sequencing. Han is currently the Mark A. Pytosh Scholar and Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Illinois. Her group develops and implements new imaging- and microfluidics-based bioanalytical platforms to unveil molecular and cellular mechanisms driving system-level functions. With her impact on bioanalytical science, she was selected as Analytical Chemistry Career Board and received the Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D award for Science and NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award.
Charles S. Henry
Colorado State University
Charles S. Henry received his PhD from the University of Arkansas followed by postdoctoral studies at the University of Kansas. He started his academic career at Mississippi State University before moving to Colorado State University in 2002, where he is currently Professor of Chemistry. He served as Department Chair from 2014-2018. His research interests lie broadly in the areas of microfluidics and electrochemistry with application to questions in bioanalytical and environmental chemistry. Specific areas of research include 1) the development of paper-based microfluidic devices for environmental monitoring, 2) the development of chemical sensors for viral and bacterial infections, 3) development of new electrode materials, and 4) tissue on a chip devices. Dr. Henry is also an Associate Editor for Analytica Chimica Acta.
Hyungsoon Im
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Hyungsoon Im is Assistant Professor at the Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he has been a faculty member since 2017. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, where he studied plasmonic sensing technologies. His lab focuses on developing next-generation sensing technologies to better understand the make-up of human diseases and changes associated with disease progression and therapy. We exploit uniquely designed nanomaterials and sensors to quantitatively analyze biomarkers and overcome clinical unmet needs.
David Issadore
The Issadore lab develops new platform technologies that combine microelectronics, microfluidics, nanomaterials, and machine learning algorithms to tackle specific, high impact problems in healthcare. In particular, David’s lab has developed technologies for the diagnosis of diseases that do not have conventional biomarkers, micro-scale manufacturing technologies that allow precision micro- and nano-material based therapeutics to be manufactured at a commercial scale, and he has explored and innovated in an assortment of other areas where he has leveraged expertise in microtechnology to improve healthcare. Because David’s background is in Physics and Electrical Engineering, the platforms that his lab develops tend to be based on a fundamental physical insight that allows them to uniquely address previously intractable problems in profoundly new ways. Additionally, the work leverages an interdisciplinary approach in which engineers, scientists, and physicians work together in teams. This team building has resulted in many strong collaborations with other academic labs both at Penn and beyond, such as The Abramson Cancer Center, Presbyterian Hospital, Mayo Clinic, and GSK. Additionally, there has been an early but promising effort to commercialize technologies developed in his lab. Two companies have been spun out, both of which have successfully raised funding from a combination of venture capital and grants.
Noo Li Jeon
Seoul National University
Noo Li Jeon, Ph.D. is a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Seoul National University. His group works at the interface of engineering and biology to develop novel tools in the field of organ on a chip. He started his career at UC Irvine (2001-2009) in the Department of Biomedical Engineering developing microfluidic devices for culturing neurons and stem cells that led to Xona Microfluidics, a company specializing in microfluidic devices for neuroscience applications. He moved to Seoul National University in 2009 and has been focusing on developing vascularized tissue/organoid models on microfluidic devices. He founded Qureator, a start up that develops standardized 3D cell culture platform for drug discovery.
Hyo-Il Jung
Hyo-Il Jung is a Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, South Korea. He received his Ph.D. (Physical Biochemistry) degree from University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. His research includes the development of bio-analytical systems for human healthcare, in particular microfluidic strategy for isolation and enrichment of circulating biomarkers including circulating tumor cells and extracellular vesicles. In addition, his group design and fabricate various type of electrochemical biosensors to solve environmental problems generated from COVID-19 pandemic. Recently he has contributed to the founding of a start-up company. He also serves as a technical advisor to several in vitro diagnostics companies. He is author of over 100 journals articles and owns over 70 patents. He also serves as the president of Korean Society of Extracellular Vesicles (KSEV) and a vice president of Korean Biochip Society (KBS).
Joo H. Kang
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea
Dr. Joo H. Kang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea. He received double Bachelor’s degrees in Chemical Engineering and Life Science from Sogang University in 2002 and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2004 and 2008, respectively. Kang joined Boston Children’s Hospital in Harvard Medical School as a research fellow in 2009. He continued his work at the Wyss Institute, Harvard University, as a Wyss Technology Development Fellow from 2012-2016 under the supervision of Don Ingber, founding director of the Wyss Institute, before joining UNIST. He received several awards in his early career, including the Award for Professional Development from Harvard University, Wyss Technology Development Fellowship from Harvard University, Baxter Young Investigator Award from Baxter Inc., and Young Frontiers in Bio and Braining Engineering from KAIST. His research interests include multiscale biofluidic approaches for infectious diseases, cancer diagnosis, and miniaturized organ-mimicking microsystems. He has made consistent efforts in translational research to commercialize an extracorporeal blood cleansing device using opsonin-coated magnetic nanoparticles, which was proven to restore immune homeostasis of animals lethally infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Moreover, his research group works on miniaturized physiological systems (MPS) mimicking organ compartments for developing in vitro disease models, drug screening platforms, and tissue regeneration.
Michelle Khine
UC Irvine
Michelle Khine, Ph.D. is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, and Samueli Scholar for Susan Samueli Integrative Health Instituteat UC Irvine. She is the founding Director of Faculty Innovation at the Samueli School of Engineering and founding Director of BioENGINE (BioEngineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship) at UC Irvine. Prior to joining UC Irvine, she was an Assistant & Founding Professor at UC Merced. Michelle received her BS and MS from UC Berkeley in Mechanical Engineering and her PhD in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley and UCSF. She is the Scientific Founder of 6 start-up companies. Michelle was the recipient of the TR35 Award and named one of Forbes ’10 Revolutionaries’ and by Fast Company Magazine as one of the ‘100 Most Creative People in Business’. Michelle is a Fellow of AIMBE (American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering) and well as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Hong Nam Kim
KIST
Dr. Hong Nam Kim is currently with the Brain Science Institute at KIST. He received his B.S. (2008), M.S. (2010), and Ph.D. (2014) from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul National University, respectively. He spent 1.5 year as a post-doc in Brain Science Institute, KIST. Then he became a Senior Researcher at the same institution in 2016. His research topic covers the development of the brain-on-a-chip platforms and their applications in the modeling of human brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, diabetic brain, air pollution-mediated neurodegeneration. He also authored 80 publications, including journals such as Advanced Functional Materials, Science Advances, ACS Nano, Nano Today, and Biomaterials.
Jina Ko
University of Pennsylvania
Jina Ko is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Bioengineering at University of Pennsylvania. She focuses on developing single molecule detection from single extracellular vesicles (EV) and multiplexed molecular profiling to better diagnose diseases and monitor treatment efficacy. Jina graduated from Rice University with a B.S. in Bioengineering and a B.A. in French Studies in 2013 and she earned her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. During her Ph.D., she developed machine learning-based microchip diagnostics that can detect blood-based biomarkers to diagnose pancreatic cancer and traumatic brain injury. For her postdoctoral training, she worked at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University as a Schmidt Science Fellow and a NIH K99/R00 award recipient. Jina developed new methods to profile single cells and single EV with high throughput and multiplexing.
Ester J. Kwon
University of California San Diego
Ester J. Kwon is an assistant professor of Bioengineering at the University of California San Diego. She earned her B.S. in Bioengineering and B.A. in Molecular & Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Bioengineering at the University of Washington with Suzie H. Pun and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Sangeeta N. Bhatia. Her group in the Bioengineering Department at UCSD engineers nanoscale tools, diagnostics, and treatments for diseases of the brain Dr. Kwon is a recipient of the pre- and post-doctoral NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards, the NIH Director’s New Innovator award, and the NSF CAREER Award. In addition to her research activities, Dr. Kwon is motivated to create an inclusive research environment through the individualized mentorship of trainees and outreach to young scientists.
Sunghoon Kwon
Seoul National University
Dr. Sunghoon Kwon is a professor of School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seoul National University leading Biophotonics and Nanoengineernig Laboratory. He received his B. S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1998), M. S. in Biomedical Engineering (2000) from Seoul National University, and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from University of California, Berkeley (2004). Sunghoon Kwon is a scientific founder and CEO of QuantaMatrix, providing life-saving diagnostic device in the field of clinical microbiology. He also a founder and scientific advisor in Celemics Inc, a company that provides NGS panels for cancer genomics based on high throughput DNA/RNA synthesis technology. His main purpose is to help life scientist with innovative technologies since he believes important scientific discovery and medical innovation starts with development of innovative tools. His research interest includes innovative diagnostic/ therapeutic technologies for personalized medicine and digital immune imaging for next generation healthcare. He received many prestigious awards including the 2011 KAST Young Scientist Award, the 2012 Presidential Young Scientist Award, the 2016 IEEK/IEEE IT Young Engineer Award, the 2018 NAEK Young Engineer Award, 2022 Inchon Award.
Wilbur A. Lam
Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology
Wilbur A. Lam, M.D., Ph.D. is a physician-scientist-engineer who is the W. Paul Bowers Research Chair and Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Engineering (with tenure) at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology as well as a physician at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where he also serves as Chief Innovation Officer of the Pediatric Technology Center of Georgia Tech and Children’s. Dr. Lam obtained his B.A. from Rice University, his M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine, and his bioengineering Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Francisco, where he also completed his clinical training in pediatrics and pediatric hematology/oncology. Dr. Lam’s interdisciplinary laboratory serves as a unique “one-stop shop” in which they develop microsystems- and smartphone-based platforms to study and diagnose pediatric and blood diseases and then directly translate those technologies to his patients. His lab’s basic science interests involve developing and leveraging microfluidic devices as in vitro models of hematologic diseases, including sickle cell disease and bleeding/thrombotic disorders. With an interest in patient-operated and smartphone-based diagnostics, the Lam Lab is also dedicated to further developing their technologies as novel “cheap tech” solutions to enable and empower pediatric patients to more easily monitor their own diseases at home and in the global health and rural settings. Dr. Lam has also co-founded and serves as chief medical officer for two medical device startups based on his laboratory’s research. In addition, Dr. Lam is a principal investigator of the Atlanta Center for Microsystems Engineered Point-Of-Care Technologies (ACME POCT), which is part of the NIBIB Point-of-Care Technologies Research Network and currently serves as the Test Verification Core of the NIH RADx Tech initiative for COVID-19 diagnostic testing. Among other honors, Dr. Lam has been elected into the American Society of Clinical Investigation, is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, named an Emerging Investigator by the journal Lab-on-a-Chip published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, and is recipient of an NSF Career Award as well as the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology’s Frank A. Oski Memorial Lectureship Award, the Lab on a Chip and Dolomite Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship Award, and an Emerging Investigator Award by the NHLBI of the NIH. His laboratory’s research is funded by the NIH, NSF, FDA, the American Heart Association, the Coulter Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Georgia Research Alliance.
Séverine Le Gac
University of Twente
Séverine Le Gac is full professor at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, where she leads a team called “Applied Microfluidics for BioEngineering Research – AMBER”. Séverine Le Gac received her engineer degree in chemistry (specialization biology) from the ESPCI (Paris, France) in 2000 and her PhD cum laude in 2004 in life sciences from the University of Lille (France). She has more than 20 years’ experience in the field of microfluidics focusing on bioanalytical, biological and medical applications. Her research interests focus on the use of microfluidic devices and organ-on-chip models, including experimentation on single cells, analysis of extracellular vesicles, cancer research, assisted reproductive technologies, and the incorporation of biomechanical cues in organ-on-chip models. Prof. Le Gac is Associate Editor of the Lab on a chip journal (RSC), co-editor-in-chief of the Organs-on-a-chip journal (Elsevier) and part of the advisory board of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering (IOP Publisher). Since 2018, she has also been Member of the Director Board of the CBMS Society (Chemical and Biological Microsystem Society; https://cbmsociety.org/), of which she is currently the vice-president.
Abraham (Abe) P. Lee
University of California, Irvine
Abraham (Abe) P. Lee is Professor of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at the University of California, Irvine. He is Director of the NSF I/UCRC “Center for Advanced Design & Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics” (CADMIM). Dr. Lee served as Editor-in-Chief for the Lab on a Chip journal from 2017 to 2020. Prior to UCI, he was at the National Cancer Institute and was a program manager in the Microsystems Technology Office at DARPA (1999-2001), Senior Technology Advisor at National Cancer Institute (NCI) and a group leader with Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL). Over the years, Dr. Lee has pioneered research in applying microfluidics to biomedical applications, and currently focuses on integrated microfluidic systems for precision medicine including liquid biopsy, microphysiological systems, cell engineering, and immunotherapy. His research has contributed to the founding of several start-up companies. He owns 55 issued US patents and is author of over 130 journals articles. Professor Lee was awarded the 2009 Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize and is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).
Chwee Teck Lim
National University of Singapore
Professor Chwee Teck LIM is the NUS Society Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Institute for Health Innovation and Technology at the National University of Singapore. He is also the Director of the Singapore Health Technologies Consortium. His research interests are in human disease mechanobiology as well as development of innovative microfluidic and wearable technologies for biomedical applications. He is a prolific researcher having co-authored over 450 journal publications including in Nature and Science related journals and given more than 420 plenary/keynote/invited lectures. He is also a serial entrepreneur having started six companies to commercialize technologies developed in his lab. Prof Lim is globally recognized for his distinguished academic achievements as is evidenced by his elected fellowships at the IUPESM, US National Academy of Inventors, AIMBE, IAMBE, the ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology, the Academy of Engineering, Singapore and the Singapore National Academy of Science. He and his team have garnered over 100 research awards and honours including Highly Cited Researcher, IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award, ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award, Asian Scientists 100, Credit Suisse Technopreneur of the Year Award, Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award (Gold) and the President’s Technology Award among others.
Jacqueline Linnes
Purdue University
Dr. Jacqueline Linnes is the Marta E. Gross Associate Professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University and is the Director of the College of Engineering Honors Program at Purdue University. Her inclusive interdisciplinary research lab develops point-of- care diagnostics, wearable devices, and global health technologies for underserved populations in the US and abroad. Dr. Linnes teaches undergraduate design and engineering health equity, graduate diagnostics and instrumentation, and international workshops on human-centered design worldwide. Her work emphasizes the translation of fundamental microfluidics and biological assays into point-of-care diagnostics using human-centered design principles. Her experience in translational research includes co-founding and managing early-stage field-testing and user feedback for 4 startup companies. Dr. Linnes is a recipient of the NIH NIDA DP2 Avenir Award, NIH NIBIB Trailblazer Award, Moore Inventor Fellow, and 2022 Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, and Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science (ELATES) Fellow.
Jia Liu
Harvard University
Prof. Jia Liu has more than 15 years of experience in nanoelectronics and bioelectronics. He received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Harvard University in 2014. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University from 2015 to 2018. He joined Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as an Assistant Professor in 2019. His laboratory at Harvard University is focusing on the development of soft bioelectronics, cyborg engineering, genetic/genomic engineering, and computational tools to address questions in brain-machine interface, neuroscience, cardiac diseases, and developmental disorders.
Dr. Liu has pioneered in bioelectronics where he has originated new paradigms that have defined the soft electronic materials and nanoelectronics architectures for “tissue-like electronics”, and their original applications for long-term stable brain-machine interface, high-density cardiac mapping, stem cell maturation, and multimodal spatial biology. His work has established some of the fundamental principles for current tissue- and brain-machine interfaces used in both academic research and industrial applications. He cofounded and served as scientific advisor of Axoft, Inc., a brain-machine interface company.
Dr. Liu’s work has been cited by Science as milestones in bioelectronics in 2013 and 2017, and awarded as Most Notable Chemistry Research and Top 10 World-Changing Ideas in 2015. Dr. Liu’s independent career has been recognized by recent awards, including a 2022 Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), a 2021 NIH/NIDDK Catalyst Award from the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award Program, a 2020 William F. Milton Award, and a 2019 Aramont Award for Emerging Science Research Fellowship.
Megan L. McCain
University of Southern California
Megan L. McCain, PhD, is the Chonette Early Career Chair and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Southern California. Her research group, the Laboratory for Living Systems Engineering, integrates tunable biomaterials, innovative microfabrication techniques, and human cells to engineer “Organ on a Chip” models of healthy and diseased tissues, with a focus on cardiac, skeletal, and uterine muscle tissues. Megan is a recipient of a Scientist Development Grant from the American Heart Association and a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. She has also been recognized as a Young Innovator of Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering by the Biomedical Engineering Society. She received her PhD and postdoctoral training in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University.
Michael J. Mitchell
University of Pennsylvania
Michael J. Mitchell is the Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. The Mitchell lab’s research broadly lies at the interface of biomaterials science, drug delivery, and cellular and molecular bioengineering to fundamentally understand and therapeutically target biological barriers. Specifically, his lab engineers new lipid and polymeric nanoparticle platforms for the delivery of different nucleic acid modalities to target cells and tissues across the body. His lab applies their research findings and the technologies developed to a range of human health applications, including the engineering of CAR T cells for cancer immunotherapy, mRNA vaccines, genome editing, cardiovascular disease, and in utero therapeutics to treat disease before birth. Mitchell has received numerous awards as an independent investigator, including the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award, the Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the Career Award at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. In 2022 Mitchell was named “Emerging Inventor for the Year” by Penn’s for Innovation in recognition for his lipid nanoparticle technologies and received the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Biomaterials, the T. Nagai Award from the Controlled Release Society, and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Ellis Meng
University of Southern California
Ellis Meng is the Shelly and Ofer Nemirovsky Chair of Convergent Biosciences and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. She is also the Vice Dean of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Previously, she held the role of Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering from 2015-2018 and was an inaugural holder of a Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering from 2016-2019. She received the B.S. degree in engineering and applied science and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1997, 1998, and 2003, respectively. Her research interests include biomedical microelectromechanical systems (bioMEMS), implantable biomedical microdevices, microfluidics, integrated microsystems, microsensors and actuators, biocompatible polymer microfabrication, and packaging.
Her research and professional honors include the NSF CAREER award, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Early Career Award, 2009 TR35 Young Innovator Under 35, Viterbi Early Career Chair, ASEE Curtis W. McGraw Research Award, 2018 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Technical Achievement Award, 2019 IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award, Mellon Mentoring Award, and Provost’s Mentoring Award. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), and American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). She currently serves as the Vice President of Technical Activities for the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems and Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering. She is also an inventor, co-founder of two companies based on her research, and author of a textbook on bioMEMS.
Tae-Eun Park
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea
Dr. Tae-Eun Park is an associate professor of Department of Biomedical Engineering at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in Korea where she has been a faculty member since 2017. She received her undergraduate degree in animal biotechnology in 2011 and her PhD in 2015 from Seoul National University. During PhD, she focused on development of blood-brain barrier (BBB) model and brain drug delivery systems mimicking rabies virus. She continued her postdoctoral studies at Wyss Institute in Harvard Medical School (2015-2017) under supervision of Prof. Donald E. Ingber. Her research area of interest lies in the development of organ mimetic systems for novel drug discovery and drug delivery systems using microfluidic and stem cell approaches. In particular, her research efforts focus on how to mimic and how to overcome tissue barriers including BBB, gut barrier, and glomerular filtration barrier.
Yongkeun Park
KAIST
Junsuk Rho
Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea
Prof. Junsuk Rho is a Mu-Eun-Jae (无垠斋) Endowed Chair Professor and Young Distinguished Professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea, with a double appointment in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He received his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley (2013), M.S. at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2008) and B.S. at Seoul National University, Korea (2007) all in Mechanical Engineering. Prior joining POSTECH, he conducted postdoctoral research in Materials Sciences Division & Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and also worked as a principal investigator (Ugo Fano Fellow) in Nanoscience and Technology Division & the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory. Prof. Rho has authored and co-authored more than 200 high-impact journal papers including Science, Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Photonics and Nature Communications. He is also the recipients of several notable honors and awards such as MRS graduate student award (2011), SPIE scholarships in optics and photonics (2011,2012), OSA CLEO Incubic/Milton Chang Award (2013), Samsung Lee Kun-Hee fellowship (2008-2013), US Department of Energy Argonne Named fellowship (2014), Edmund Optics Award (2015), OSK Young Investigator Award (2016), SPIE Rising Researcher Award (2017), Korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning Minister’s Commendation (2017), Distinguished Teaching Award at POSTECH (2018), Proud POSTECHIAN Award-Research (2018), Korean Ministry of Science and ICT Minister’s Commendation (2019), OSA IMCO Young Scientist Award (2019), Korean Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2019), OSK Rising Stars 30 (2020), Springer-Nature MINE Young Scientist Award (2020), Elsevier MEE/MNE Young Investigator Award and Lectureship (2020), MDPI Micromachines Young Investigator Award (2020), Member of the Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology (2020), Haerim (海林) Photonics Award (2021), Proud POSTECHIAN Award-Education (2021), Associate Member of the National Academy of Engineering of Korea (2022), NAEK Young Engineers Award (2022), Hong Jin-Ki Creator Award (2022). He is also the editor of Light: Science and Applications (Springer-Nature), Microsystems and Nanoengineering (Springer-Nature), Nanophotonics (De Gruyter), Nano Convergence (Springer), Micro and Nano Engineering (Elsevier), Photonix (Springer), Photonics Insights (Chinese Laser Press), Frontiers of Optoelectronics (Springer), Frontiers in Nanotechnology (Frontiers), Journal of Micro- and Nano-Manufacturing (ASME), Current Optics and Photonics (OSK), Scientific Reports (Springer-Nature) and iScience (Cell Press).
Joe Sarkis
Moderna
Joe Sarkis joined Moderna in August 2017 as a Senior Scientist of Biological Science, where he has built a team to understand the molecular mechanism involved in Lipid Nanoparticles delivery to different tissues and developed assays to optimize mRNA engineering with extended pharmacology thus supporting Moderna’s pipeline. Joe’s team also drove the development of neutralization assay that measures the efficacy of Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine & used today against new variants.
Joe is based in Boston MA, USA and comes with an experience of more than 12 years in lipid-based drug delivery system in addition to an extensive and diverse Biochemistry & Cellular biology background, having worked at Harvard Medical School in Boston MA and at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing, China.
His experiences include both small molecules and large biologics across several modalities and therapeutic areas spanning gene therapy, vaccines, biologics, Oligonucleotides, rare and auto-immune diseases.
Simone Schuerle
ETH Zurich
Simone Schuerle is an Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where she heads the Responsive Biomedical System Lab. With her team, she develops diagnostic and therapeutic systems at the nano-and microscale with the aim of tackling a range of challenging problems in medicine. Prior to taking this position, she researched at MIT on nanosensors for in vivo tumor profiling as well methods to wirelessly enhance drug transport (2014-2017). She is recipient of several awards, such as the Prix Zonta in 2019 for Women in Science, and fellowships and grants from the SNSF, DAAD and Branco Weiss foundation, and was honored with the distinction of “Young Scientist” by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for her scientific contributions to society. In 2014 she co-founded the spin-off MagnebotiX that offers electromagnetic control systems for wireless micromanipulation. She earned her PhD degree with specialization in microrobotics in 2013 at ETHZ for which she was awarded the ETH medal, and a masters in industrial engineering with specialization on microsystems and nanotechnology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
Jae-Won Shin
University of Illinois at Chicago
Jae-Won Shin, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Regenerative Medicine, and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Shin received his B.S. from the University of Sydney and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He did his postdoctoral training in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. Dr. Shin’s research team is employing interdisciplinary approaches to precisely build instructive niches and remodel host microenvironments for treatment of tissue injury, degeneration and fibrosis. This effort has led to pioneering new fields, including digital design of engineered niches to direct single cell functions, single cell encapsulation therapy, and engineering extracellular vesicle-matrix interfaces. He is a recipient of a National Institutes of Health K99/R00 award, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) Rising Star Award and Advanced Biomanufacturing (ABioM) Junior Investigator Award by the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).
H. Tom Soh
Stanford University
Dr. H. Tom Soh is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Radiology at Stanford University. His laboratory develops synthetic biomaterials and biosensor devices. He earned his B.S. (1992), with a double major in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science with Distinction from Cornell University and his M.S. (1995) and Ph.D. (1999) in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Between 1999 and 2003, he served as a technical manager of MEMS device research group at Bell Laboratories and Agere Systems. Between 2003 and 2015, he was the Ruth Garland Professor at UC-Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials. His lab moved to Stanford in 2015. He is a recipient of numerous awards including MIT Technology Review’s “TR 100” Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, Beckman Young Investigator Award, ALA Innovator Award, NIH Director’s TR01 Award, NIH Edward Nagy Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Alexander van Humboldt Fellowship, Chan-Zuckerberg Investigatorship. He is fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).
Lydia L. Sohn
UC Berkeley
Lydia L. Sohn received her A.B. (Chemistry and Physics, 1988), M.S. (Physics, 1990), and Ph.D. (Physics, 1992) from Harvard University. She was an NSF/NATO postdoctoral fellow at Delft University of Technology (1992-1993) and a postdoctoral fellow at AT&T Bell Laboratories (1993-1995) prior to joining the Physics faculty at Princeton University in 1995. Since 2003, Sohn has been a professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC Berkeley, where she is now holds the Almy C. Maynard & Agnes Offield Maynard Chair in Mechanical Engineering. Sohn is a Core Member of the UCSF-UC Berkeley Joint-Graduate Group in Bioengineering. Her work focuses on developing and employing label-free, quantitative techniques to screen and identify single cells and extracellular vesicles for biomedical-research and clinical-diagnostic applications. Sohn has received numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER and the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award. In 2010, Sohn received the prestigious W. M. Keck Foundation Medical Research award to develop a label-free method for screening and sorting rare cells. In 2014, Sohn’s developed label-free method—Node-Pore Sensing (NPS)—was named one of five “Revolutionary Platform Technologies for Advancing Life Sciences Research” in a competition sponsored by 6 major foundations, including the W. M. Keck Foundation, Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, Kavli Foundation, Burroughs-Wellcome Fund, John Templeton Foundation, and Research Corporation, and Sohn was honored at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for this award. Sohn previously served on the Executive Committee of the UCSF-UCB Graduate Program in Bioengineering and Scientific Advisory Board of the Boulder School for Condensed Matter & Materials Physics and was the Chair of UC Berkeley’s Institutional Biosafety Committee for 10 years. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Aaron Streets
UC Berkeley
Aaron Streets received a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in Art at UCLA. He completed his PhD in Applied Physics at Stanford with Dr. Stephen Quake. Aaron then went to Beijing, China as a Whitaker International Postdoctoral Fellow and a Ford postdoctoral fellow and worked with Dr. Yanyi Huang in the Biodynamic Optical Imaging Center (BIOPIC) at Peking University. Aaron joined the faculty of UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor in Bioengineering in 2016 and is currently a core member of the Biophysics Program and the Center for Computational Biology and he is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator. Aaron has received the NSF Early Career award and was named a Pew Biomedical Scholar.
Sindy KY Tang
Stanford University
Prof. Sindy KY Tang is the Kenneth and Barbara Oshman Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and by courtesy of Radiology (Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics) at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in Engineering Sciences under the supervision of Prof. George Whitesides. Her lab at Stanford aims to develop innovative micro and nanoscale devices that enable precise manipulation, measurement, and recapitulation of biological systems, in order to understand the “rules of life” and accelerate precision medicine and material design for a future with better health and environmental sustainability. She was a Stanford Biodesign Faculty Fellow in 2018. Prof. Tang’s work has been recognized by multiple awards including the NSF CAREER Award, and invited lecture at the Nobel Symposium on Microfluidics in Sweden. Website: http://web.stanford.edu/group/tanglab/
Ashleigh Theberge
University of Washington
Ashleigh Theberge is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Urology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She received a BA in Chemistry from Williams College and a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge, UK with Wilhelm Huck in droplet-based microfluidics. During her graduate work, she was a Visiting Scientist with Andrew Griffiths at the Université de Strasbourg, France. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Biomedical Engineering, Toxicology, and Urology with David Beebe, William Ricke, and Wade Bushman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She joined the faculty at the University of Washington in 2016. She was elected co-Vice Chair (2019) and co-Chair (2023) for the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on the Physics and Chemistry of Microfluidics. Selected awards include an NIH K Career Development Award (2014), a Kavli Microbiome Ideas Challenge Award grant (2017), an NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) for Early Stage Investigators (2018), a Beckman Young Investigator Award (2018), a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering (2019), a Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry (2021), and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2022). She has also been recognized for her efforts in mentoring and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) with a University of Washington Undergraduate Research Mentor Award (2021), and she was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Gilliam Mentor (2021).
Peter Tseng
University of California, Irvine
Peter Tseng is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at the University of California, Irvine. His research focus is on merging concepts from materials science, electromagnetism, and micro-/nanofabrication into novel devices for sensing and actuation in living systems.
He earned his B.S. at the University of California, Berkeley, before received his Ph.D in Electrical and Computer engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. After a stint at Tufts University as an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellow, he began his faculty position at Irvine. His peer-reviewed publications have been published in journals such as Nature Methods, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Electronics, Advanced Materials and more, while being spotlighted in international press. His is the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, whose research is being spun off into numerous startups encompassing applications in cell control, in-vitro platforms, wearable devices, and body-area networks.
Ian Wong
Brown University
Ian Wong is Associate Professor of Engineering and of Pathology / Laboratory Medicine at Brown University. His lab uses biomaterials, mechanobiology, and computer vision to investigate cancer cell migration. He also works on unconventional materials fabrication for 3D printing and patterning. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University with Nick Melosh. He then completed postdoctoral training at the Center for Engineering of Massachusetts General Hospital with Mehmet Toner and Daniel Irimia, before starting his lab at Brown University. He has been recognized by awards including the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellowship, and the Brown University CareerLAB Pierrepont Prize for Outstanding Advising.
David Wood
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
David Wood received his B.S. in Physics in 2001 at North Carolina State University and received his Ph.D. in Physics in 2007 at the University of California, Santa Barbara. David is currently an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and the director of the Living Devices Laboratory. The Living Devices Lab develops advanced in vitro models to study a number of pathologies with heavy focus on sickle cell disease and metastatic cancer. This work leverages microtechnology, tissue engineering, bioengineering, and quantitative analysis to dissect mechanisms of disease.
Angela Ruohao Wu
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Angela Ruohao Wu is an associate professor in the Division of Life Science and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She completed her Ph.D., and post-doctoral training in Bioengineering at Stanford University. Angela is one of the earliest in the world to work in single cell genomics (Nature Methods 2014; Nature 2014). She also pioneered the field of microfluidic chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and invented the first microfluidic chip for automated ChIP (Lab Chip 2009). Her current research uses genomics and microfluidics to address complex biological questions, developing innovative technological platforms for precise cellular analysis and manipulation, as well as translating genomics solutions into the clinic. Angela was named one of MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35 Asia in 2016 and a World Economic Forum Young Scientist in 2018.
Yong Zeng
University of Florida
Dr. Yong Zeng is an associate professor of chemistry and affiliate faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida, as well as a member of UF Health Cancer Center. His research draws on chemistry, material sciences, bioengineering, and medicine to develop innovative micro and nanoscale tools to advance precision medicine of challenging diseases, in particular cancer. His technology innovations span from biomolecular assays to lab-on-a-chip systems and to smart biosensor powered by robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) for sensitive and quantitative measurements of liquid biopsies and biomarkers, including extracellular vesicles (EVs), proteins, nucleic acids, and glycans. Specifically, he is internationally recognized for his pioneering research in developing microfluidic technologies for isolation and analysis of tumor-derived EVs, an emerging paradigm of liquid biopsy for cancer diagnostics and therapeutics. He is devoted to translational research to bring the technological innovations from the benchtop to bedside, working with biologists and clinicians. His work has led to many highly visible publications on top-tier journals, including Nat. Biomed. Eng. and Sci. Transl. Med., which were featured on numerous news coverage in professional and public media outlets such as the NIH Director’s Blog and the JAMA Network.