Research Areas

Bryan Pfister

Professor and Chair, BME
Director of Center for Injury Biomechanics, Materials and Medicine

Lab/Center: Center for Injury Biomechanics, Materials and Medicine

Research Focus:

• Characterization of Shock Tubes
• Neurophysiology and Behavioral Outcomes
• Biomedical and Molecular Characterization
• Blood-Brain Barrier Damage​
• Animal injury models
• Blast and Blunt Injury studies
• Tissue engineering
• developmental neural biology
• axon growth
• mechanisms of neural injuries
• nervous system injury repair.

Tara Alvarez

Distinguished Professor, BME
Director of Vision and Neural Engineering Laboratory

Lab/Center: Vision and Neural Engineering Laboratory

Research Focus:

• Vision Rehabilitation
• Treatment to regain oculomotor function
• Neuroplasticity
• Concussion
• functional imaging
• eye movements
• data analytics

Bharat Biswal

Distinguished Professor, BME

 

Research Focus:

• brain activity mapping.
• fMRI studies to understand how different regions of the brain communicate while the brain is at rest.

Sergei Adamovich

Professor, BME
Director of Neuromotor Behavior and Neurorehabilitation Engineering Lab

Lab/Center: Neuromotor Behavior and Neurorehabilitation Engineering Lab

Research Focus:

• Neural engineering
• rehabilitation engineering
• computer-assisted rehabilitation

Mesut Sahin

Professor, BME
Director of Neural Prosthetics Laboratory

Lab/Center: Neural Prosthetics Laboratory

Research Focus:

• Neuromodulation of the Cerebellum
• Transcranial AC Stimulation (tACs)
• Focused Ultrasound (FUS) Stimulation
• Sensori-Motor Content of Cerebellar Signals

Vivek Kumar

Associate Professor, BME
Director of Biomaterial Drug Discovery, Delivery & Development Laboratory

Lab/Center: KumarLab

Research Focus:

• Tissue engineering
• Drug development
• Medical devices
• Peptide based biomaterials
• self-assembly
• in vitro testing
• in vivo models
• angiogenesis
• inflammation.

Xianlian Alex Zhou

Associate Professor, BME
Director of BioDynamics Lab

Lab/Center: BioDynamics Lab

Research Focus:

• Computational biomechanics
• digital human modeling
• robotics and human-machine interface
• Musculoskeletal biomechanics
• Cardiovascular biomechanics
• Computational Multiphysics
• personalized medicine.

Xiaobo Li

Assocciate Professor, BME
Director of Computational Neuroanatomy and Neuroinformatics Laboratory

Lab/Center: Computational Neuroanatomy and Neuroinformatics Laboratory

Research Focus:

• Computational neuroanatomy
• multi-modal MRI (structural MRI, fMRI, DTI)
• bioinformatics
• graph theory
• machine learning
• neuroimaging in brain development and disorders (e.g. ADHD, ASD, schizophrenia, TBI).

Alice Eun Jung Lee

Assocciate Professor, BME



Research Focus:

• Cardiovascular tissue engineering
• applied mechanics
• stem cells
• regenerative medicine.

Saikat Pal

Assistant Professor, BME
Director of Life Sciences Motion Capture Lab

Lab/Center: CORE Lab

Research Focus:

• computational biomechanics
• aging and motor control
• Cerebral palsy gait
• Human performance database
• Exoskeleton assisted locomotion
• Spinal cord injury rehabilitation
• Biomechanics of baseball pitching

Jonathan Grasman​

Assistant Professor, BME
Director of Tissue Innervation and Muscle Mimetics Laboratory

Lab/Center: Tissue Innervation and Muscle
Mimetics Laboratory

Research Focus:

• Tissue Engineering
• Biomaterials
• 3D tissue models
• Tissue innervation
• Neurovascular interactions
• Soft tissue regeneration and reconstruction
• Skeletal muscle tissue engineering
• Neural tissue engineering
• Nervous system injury and repair
• Stem cells and cellular reprogramming
• Biopolymers

Amir Miri

Assistant Professor, BME
Director of Advanced Biofabrication Laboratory

Lab/Center: MIRI Lab

Research Focus: 

• Fabrication of hydrogel microfluidic chip
• Bioprinting
• Medical devices to deliver drug-loaded hydrogels
• Novel biofabrication procedures
• Organ-on-chip platforms
• Microfluidics for drug-screening

Alexander Buffone

Assistant Professor, BME
Director of Cellular Motion Lab

Lab/Center: Cellular Motion Lab

Research Focus:

• Glycobiology
• Genetic Engineering
• Mechanobiology
• Cellular Motion

Jongsang Son

Assistant Professor, BME
Director of Clinical Neuromuscular Adaptation Laboratory

Lab/Center: Clinical Neuromuscular Adaptation Laboratory

Research Focus:

• Neuromuscular biomechanics
• musculoskeletal modeling
• ultrasound imaging
• neuromuscular adaptation
• neuromuscular dynamics
• muscle weakness
• rehabilitation engineering

Elisa Kallioniemi

Assistant Professor, BME
Director of Brain Stimulation Lab

Lab/Center: Brain Simulation Lab

Research Focus:

• Brain stimulation
• neural engineering
• biomarkers
• neural plasticity
• personalized therapeutics
• neurological and psychiatric disorders

George Collins

Research Professor, BME

Research Focus:

• Amorphous phase in pharmaceuticals and biomaterial solids
• molecular origin of physical behavior of polymeric and pharmaceutical solids
• physical characterization of biomaterials
• nano-fiber materials
• fabrication of novel scaffolds for tissue engineering applications

Rajarshi Chattaraj

Assistant Professor, BME

Lab/Center: Chattaraj lab

Research Focus:

• Recombinant protein self-assembly
• Ultrasound responsive materials, for tunable bio-interfacial interactions for drug delivery, therapeutics and biosensing
• Colloidal and interfacial design of nanodroplets (NDs), microbubbles (MBs), and vesicles

Maryam Hajfathalian

Assistant Professor, BME

Research Focus:

• Synthesis, and characterization of theranostic nanomaterials
•  target delivery of organic and inorganic nanoagents
• Cancer and infectious diseases