For the 2015-2016 academic year, nine new faculty have joined Georgia Tech and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. Please welcome the following faculty:

 

Stanislav Emelianov

Joseph M. Pettit Chair in Microelectronics and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, joint appointment with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Ph.D., Moscow State University

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan

Area of focus: Imaging and Cancer Technologies

 

Stanislav Emelianov received his Ph.D. degree from Moscow State University, Russia. He was previously professor of biomedical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, and an adjunct professor of imaging physics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Emelianov’s research interests are in the areas of intelligent diagnostic imaging and patient-specific image-guided therapeutics including cancer imaging and diagnosis, the detection and treatment of atherosclerosis, the development of imaging and therapeutic nanoagents, guided drug delivery and controlled release, simultaneous anatomical, functional, cellular and molecular imaging, multi-modal imaging, and image-guided therapy.

 

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Ravi Kane

Garry Betty Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Cancer Nanotechnology, School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University

Area of focus: Nanotechnology

 

Ravi Kane went to graduate school at MIT where he received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. Kane’s research lies at the interface of biotechnology and nanotechnology. His group is designing nanoscale polyvalent therapeutics and working on the molecular engineering of biosurfaces and nanostructures. Kane was previously named by MIT’s Technology Review as one of the TR100 – the top 100 young innovators in the world. After postdoctoral research at Harvard University, Kane joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute eventually becoming head of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

 

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Machelle Pardue

Professor

Ph.D., University of Waterloo

Postdoctoral Fellow, Loyola University

Area of focus: Neuroengineering

 

Machelle Pardue is also a research career scientist at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, and an associate professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Emory University School of Medicine. Pardue received her Ph.D. in vision science and biology at the University of Waterloo. Her research has been continuously supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs, NIH, and private companies. Pardue’s laboratory uses a combination of electrophysiological, histological, imaging, and molecular techniques to investigate the pathophysiology of retinal disease and develop treatments and therapies to preserve or restore vision. Her current research focuses on retinal degenerations, diabetic retinopathy, and myopia.

 

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Timothy Cope

Professor, joint appointment with the School of Applied Physiology

Ph.D., Duke University

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Washington

Area of focus: Neuroengineering

 

Timothy Cope’s research interests center on control of movement by sensorimotor integration in the mammalian spinal cord. Using predominantly electrophysiological methods applied in vivo, his group studies neural signaling by spinal motoneurons, somatosensory neurons, and their central synapses. Their primary analyses include electrical properties, synaptic function, and firing behavior of single neurons. His group is actively examining how these neurons and synapses respond soon and long after peripheral nerve injury and regeneration. Recent findings demonstrate that successful regeneration of damaged sensory axons does not prevent complex reorganization of their synaptic connections made within the spinal cord. He also continues to explore fundamental operations of the normal adult nervous system.

 

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Bilal Haider

Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Yale University

Postdoctoral Fellow, University College London

Area of focus: Neuroengineering

 

Bilal Haider’s research goal is to identify cellular and circuit mechanisms that modulate neuronal responsiveness in the cerebral cortex in vivo.

He has identified excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms in vivo that mediate rapid initiation, sustenance, and termination of persistent activity in the cortex. He is investigating the role of inhibitory circuits during wakefulness. His work showed for the first time that synaptic inhibition powerfully controls the spatial and temporal properties of visual processing in the awake cortex. His future research will investigate mechanisms used by excitatory and inhibitory neuronal sub-types in the cortex during goal-directed behaviors.

 

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Annabelle Singer

Assistant Professor

Ph.D., University of California San Francisco

Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Area of focus: Neuroengineering

 

For a hundred years, scientists have investigated neural codes, patterns of neural spiking activity from single to hundreds of cells, to try to understand how this activity represents experiences. Annabelle Singer’s research elucidates how such neural activity is decoded at multiple levels: from downstream cells receiving this activity via synaptic inputs to the behavior driven by such activity. To do this she uses a combination of novel electrophysiological, behavioral, optogenetic, and computational tools to determine how neural activity is received and interpreted by downstream cells in awake behaving animals and how neural activity drives behavior.

 

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James Dahlman

Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Postdoctoral Fellow, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Area of focus: Drug Delivery and Cardiovascular Engineering

 

James Dahlman is a chemical and bioengineer whose work lies at the interface of nanotechnology, genomics, and gene editing. He studied in vivo gene editing at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; he received his Ph.D. from MIT and Harvard Medical School. Dahlman is interested in drug delivery, targeted in vivo gene editing, and using genomics to improve biomaterial design. He has designed and synthesized nanoparticles that efficiently deliver RNAs to the lung and heart. These nanoparticles can deliver multiple RNAs at once, and can simultaneously knockdown five genes concurrently in vivo. They have been used by over ten labs across the United States to study cancer, atherosclerosis, inflammation, emphysema, and pulmonary hypertension, and are being evaluated for clinical trials.

 

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Frank L. Hammond III

Assistant Professor, joint appointment with the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University

Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Area of focus: Healthcare Robotics

 

Frank Hammond has dedicated much of his academic career to conducting research as a mechanical engineer and roboticist. A vast majority of that time has been spent at the intersection of robotics and healthcare. His research efforts are centered on the development of adaptive robotic manipulation systems: robotic devices having morphological structures, actuation topologies, and sensing and control schemes that make them well-suited to operating alongside or in the place of humans in unstructured, dynamically varying environments. Adaptive robotic devices have several promising, clinically-relevant applications and have demonstrated the potential to improve standards of care and patient accessibility to treatments in areas such as teleoperative microsurgery and at-home physical therapy.

 

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Denis Tsygankov

Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina

Area of focus: Mechanics and Systems Biology

 

Denis Tsygankov obtained his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology where his research interests were on synchronization phenomena in coupled dynamical systems. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park, Tsygankov applied his knowledge of theoretical physics to study biological systems. His research during this time focused on energy transduction and force degeneration by molecular motors, such as kinesin and dynein. His current research is focused on developing and applying computational methods, including mathematical modeling, simulations, and computer vision approaches to understand complex multi-scale physiological processes including vasculogenesis, morphogenesis, and wound healing.

 

Contact:

Walter Rich
Communications Manager
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology