Abraham Lee, Editor-in-Chief
University of California at Irvine, USA
Abraham (Abe) P. Lee is the William J. Link Professor and Chair of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) Department with a courtesy appointment in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at the University of California, Irvine. He is the Director of the NSF I/UCRC “Center for Advanced Design & Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics” (CADMIM) and also was PI for the Micro/nano Fluidics Fundamentals Focus (MF3) Center, a DARPA-industry supported research center (2006-2013). Prior to joining UCI in 2002, he was a Senior Technology Advisor in the Office of Technology and Industrial Relations at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and a program manager in the Microsystems Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (Arlington, VA). Dr. Lee started his career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and led projects on the development of microtools for the treatment of stroke and biowarfare defense. Dr. Lee’s lab focuses on microfluidic platforms applied to point-of-care and molecular diagnostics, sample preparation and liquid biopsy, cell-like vesicles for theranostics, single cell processing and analysis, and vascularized organ-on-a-chips. His research has contributed to the founding of several start-up companies and he serves as an advisor to companies and government agencies. He owns more than 40 issued US patents. Professor Lee was awarded the 2009 Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize and is an elected fellow of the American Institute of and Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Dr. Lee received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and his B.S. degree from National Tsing Hua University.
Petra Dittrich, Associate editor
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Petra Dittrich has been Associate Professor for Bioanalytics at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering since 2014. Her research in the field of lab-on-chip-technologies focuses on the miniaturization of high-sensitivity devices for chemical and biological analyses, and microfluidic-aided organization of materials.
Professor Dittrich studied chemistry at Bielefeld University (Germany) and Universidad de Salamanca (Spain) from 1993 to 1999. She earned her PhD degree at the Max Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (MPI Göttingen, Germany) in 2003 for her thesis on single fluorescent molecule spectroscopy and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy in microfluidic channels. After another year as postdoctoral fellow at the MPI Göttingen, she had a postdoctoral appointment at the Institute for Analytical Sciences (ISAS Dortmund, Germany) (2004-2008). For research stays, she was at the Cornell University (2002) and the University of Tokyo (2005). In 2008, she became Assistant Professor at the Organic Chemistry Laboratories of the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences (ETH Zurich). Professor Dittrich was fellow of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, the German Exchange Organization DAAD and the Christiane Nüsslein-Vollhard-foundation. Her PhD was awarded by the Westfälisch-Lippische Universitätsgesellschaft. She received the Starting Grant from the European Research Commission (ERC) (2008), the Analytica Forschungspreis of the German Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM), donated by Roche Diagnostics GmbH (2010), the Heinrich Emanuel Merck award (2015) and the ERC Consolidator Grant (2016).etra Dittrich is Associate Professor for Bioanalytics at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering since 2014. Her research in the field of lab-on-chip-technologies focuses on the miniaturization of high-sensitivity devices for chemical and biological analyses, and microfluidic-aided organization of materials.
Hang Lu, Associate editor
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6881-660X
Hang Lu is the Love Family Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. She graduated summa cum laude from UIUC with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, and obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2003 from MIT working with Klavs Jensen and Martin Schmidt. Before starting at Georgia Tech in 2005, she was a postdoc with eurogeneticist Cori Bargmann at UCSF and Rockefeller U. Her current research interests are microfluidics and its applications in neurobiology, systems biology, cancer, and biotechnology. Her award and honors include the ACS Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award, a National Science Foundation CAREER award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a DuPont Young Professor Award, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, and sCouncil of Systems Biology in Boston (CSB2) Prize in Systems Biology; she was also named an MIT Technology Review TR35 top innovator, and invited to give the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Van Ness Award Lectures in 2011, and the Saville Lecture at Princeton in 2013. She is an elected fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and an elected fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
Jianhua Qin, Associate editor
Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, China
Jianhua Qin is a professor of Division of Biotechnology at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the Director of Microfluidics Research Center at DICP. Dr.Qin is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and a member of the Executive Technical Program Committee (ETPC) for the MicroTAS conference (2011-2015). Dr. Qin received her Ph.D in Chemistry at CAS, and her M.D in Clinical Medicine at China Medical University. She was a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong (2002-2003) and the University of Toronto (2005-2006). Dr. Qin has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and issued 35 patents to date. Her research interests lie in the interface between lab-on-a-chip technology and biomedical science in order to understand human patho-physiology that leads to the design of new diagnostic schemes and therapeutic strategies.
Joel Voldman, Associate editor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8898-2296
Professor Joel Voldman is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1995. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from MIT in 1997 and 2001, respectively. Professor Voldman performed postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School before joining the MIT faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2002.
Professor Voldman’s current research interests focus on BioMEMS, applying microfabrication technology to illuminate biological systems, ranging from point-of-care diagnostics to fundamental cell biology to applied neuroengineering. His research builds upon various disciplines: electrical engineering, microfabrication, bioengineering, transport modeling, biology, and medicine. His group takes a quantitative approach to designing technology, using both analytical and numerical modeling to gain fundamental understanding of the technologies that we create. He then takes designs from fabrication to assay.
Aaron Wheeler, Associate editor
University of Toronto, Canada
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5230-7475
Aaron Wheeler earned his PhD in Chemistry at Stanford University in 2003. After a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA, he joined the faculty at the University of Toronto in 2005, where he is the Canada Research Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry. Wheeler’s research group develops microfluidic tools to solve problems in chemistry, biology, and medicine. Wheeler has been recognized with a number of honors including the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship from the Canadian National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Arthur F. Findeis Award from the American Chemical Society, and the Joseph Black Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry. Wheeler has served as an Associate Editor of Lab on a Chip since 2013, and has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. Learn about the Wheeler group online http://microfluidics.utoronto.ca/ or on twitter at @Wheeler_Lab.
Yoon-Kyoung Cho
UNIST, South Korea
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6423-1834
Yoon-Kyoung Cho received her B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from POSTECH in South Korea in 1992 and 1994, respectively. She continued her studies in the USA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where she received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1999 under the supervision of Prof. Steve Granick. Following her graduate work at UIUC, she returned to her homeland of South Korea and joined Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) as a senior research scientist. During her nine years at SAIT, she was involved in the research and development of a wide range of lab-on-a-chip technologies for biomedical applications, several of which have made it to the commercial marketplace.
In 2008, she returned to academia as an assistant professor in the school of Nano-Bioscience and Chemical Engineering at the Ulsan National Institute for Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea and was promoted to associate professor in 2010. Since 2009, she has been the chair of her department and the director of an ambitious and prestigious program, the World Class University (WCU) program, geared to perform international research with leading scientists at UNIST. Her current research interests include novel micro/nano fluidic devices for advanced diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and cell biology. She has had a prolific career in academia and industry, publishing more than 38 scientific papers and 107 registered patents to date.
Dino Di Carlo
University of California at Los Angeles, USA
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3942-4284
Dr. Di Carlo is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Bioengineering and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UCLA. He also directs the Cancer Nanotechnology Program of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a pioneer in using inertial fluid dynamic effects to manipulate cells and assess the biomechanical properties of single cells in microfluidic devices. He has also been a leader in technology entrepreneurship as a co-founder and scientific advisor for four early stage companies commercializing intellectual property developed in this laboratory. Among other honors he is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award, and a Packard Fellowship. He is the only person to be honored by the microfluidics community with both the Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award and Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize. He is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK).
Dr. Di Carlo received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California Berkeley and conducted his postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School.
Xudong Fan
University of Michigan, USA
ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0149-1326
Prof. Fan obtained B.S. and M.S. from Peking University (China) in 1991 and 1994, respectively, and Ph.D. in physics and optics from the University of Oregon (USA) in 2000. Between 2000 and 2004, he was a project leader at 3M Company. In 2004, he joined the Department of Biological Engineering at the University of Missouri as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2009. In January of 2010, he joined the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Michigan and was promoted to Full Professor in 2014. Presently he is Professor under the College of Engineering and School of Medicine.
Prof. Fan’s research lies at the interface of photonics, physics, engineering, micro/nanofluidics, nano-/biotechnologies, and biomedicine. He has >120 peer-reviewed publications and >20 issued/pending patents. Presently, he serves on the Editorial Board of Lab on a Chip under Royal Society of Chemistry.
Prof. Fan is a recipient of 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, the Wallace H. Coulter Early Career Award, and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He is Fellow of Optical Society of America and Royal Society of Chemistry.
Piotr Garstecki
Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Science, Poland
Piotr Garstecki is a Full Professor at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Science, in Warsaw, Poland. He obtained an MSc in Theoretical Physics from the College of Science of the Polish Academy in 1998 and a PhD in Chemistry from the Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS. He later conducted research as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. George Whitesides at the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department at Harvard University. He currently leads the Research Group of Microfluidics and Complex Fluids at the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Warsaw. The group conducts research on fundamental aspects of the physics of soft matter systems and develops microfluidic tools for chemistry and biology. He coauthored over a hundred scientific publications and multiple patent applications and cofounded two spin-out companies both working on the use of microfluidic technologies in medical diagnostics.
Mark Gilligan
Dolomite, UK
Mark studied Aerospace engineering at Cranfield, and after that worked in both Formula 1 for Benetton and Aerospace for BAE Commercial aircraft. Mark then went on to work for Pitney Bowes in the US developing franking machines and Philips in the Netherlands developing the first DVD drives. In 1997 Mark moved to work for a technology consulting consultancy called The Technology Partnership (TTP) and started working on the interfaces between Engineering and Life Sciences. The outcome of a major TTP project was sold to Mettler Toledo and a new business unit was formed and built with Mark leading the R&D of that new company. Once this company was built in 2000, Mark moved into New Ventures for Mettler, investigating and acquiring businesses in automated chemistry.
In 2001 Mark left Mettler Toledo to found Syrris, which has now grown to be a world leader in cutting edge tools and technologies for synthetic chemistry, including microreactors. As Syrris grew, a number of multipurpose microfluidics technologies were developed and an increasingly diverse range of partners sought to access them. This led to the formation of Dolomite Microfluidics in 2005, which then won a large UK government grant to create a Microfluidic Application Centre. This trend of starting new brands has carried on and now Mark is the CEO of the Blacktrace Group of companies which includes Syrris, Dolomite and a number of other brands which are all collectively focussed on Productisation of Science.
Albert van den Berg
University of Twente, the Netherlands
Albert van den Berg received his MSc in applied physics in 1983, and his PhD in 1988 both at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. From 1988-1993 he worked in Neuchatel, Switzerland, at the CSEM and the University (IMT) on miniaturized chemical sensors. From 1993 until 1999 he was research director Micro Total Analysis Systems (µTAS) at MESA, University of Twente. In 1998 he was appointed as part-time professor "Biochemical Analysis Systems", and later in 2000 as full professor on Miniaturized Systems for (Bio)Chemical Analysis in the faculty of Electrical Engineering. He received several honors and awards such as Simon Stevin (2002), ERC Advanced (2008) and ERC Proof of Concept (2011) grant, Spinoza prize (2009) and Honorary University Professorship (2010). He has co-authored over 225 papers (H=41) and over 10 patents, and has been involved in 6 spin-off companies. In 2011 he became a board member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW). His current research interests focus on microanalysis systems and nanosensors, nanofluidics and single cells and tissues on chips, especially with applications in personalized health care and development of sustainable (nano)technologies.
