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Florida Association for Nanotechnology
Dr. Katie Bratlie
Professor
Iowa State University
Dr. Bratlie earned her B.S. degree from the University of Minnesota in 2003 and her PhD degree from the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Gabor Somorjai. Her current research thrusts include the development of biomaterials for medical applications and evaluation of these materials in in vitro and in vivo contexts for drug delivery and regenerative medicine. She received the NSF BRIGE Award in 2012, the ISU Honors Mentor Award in 2014, was nominated “Outstanding Faculty Member” by the Interfraternity Council in 2015, and won both the Akinc Excellence in Research and Teaching Awards in 2015.
Dr. Xiaoyuan (Shawn) Chen
Senior Investigator
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Dr. Chen serves as a Laboratory of Molecular Imaging and Nanomedicine (LOMIN) at NIH. During Dr. Chen's tenure at Stanford, he successfully translated 18F-labeled RGD peptide dimer into clinic for first-in-human imaging studies. In the summer of 2009, he joined the intramural research program of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) as a Senior Investigator and Lab Chief.
Dr. Mustafa Culha
Professor
Oregon Health & Science University
Professor Mustafa Culha obtained his MS degree from Wake Forest University in 1997 and his Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2002. Then, he joined in Advanced Biomedical Research Group as a post-doctoral researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (2002-2003) before joining to Schering-Plough Corporation, NJ as an investigator. He accepted a faculty potion at Yeditepe University in 2004 and actively involved research and teaching there until the beginning 2019. He is currently involved in the effort to detect cancer early at The Knight Cancer Institute’s Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research center, or CEDAR, at Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR. His current research interest includes elements from chemistry, medicine, material science, photonics, and nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Dr. Martin D'Souza
Professor
Mercer University
Dr. D’Souza obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania. He is a Professor & Director of Graduate Programs and Chair of Pharmaceutics in the College of Pharmacy at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia. He also serves as the Director of the Clinical Laboratory and Co-Director of the Center for Drug Delivery Research.
He is also an Associate Member of the Faculty of Infectious Disease, at the University of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia and an Associate Member at the Nanobiotechnology Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.
Dr. Raja Das
Assistant Professor
Phenikaa University, Vietnam
Dr. Das is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, Phenikaa University, Hanoi, Vietnam. He is a leader of the research group, Nanomaterials for Electronic and Renewable Energy Applications. He earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences (2014) from CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India. He was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Physics, University of South Florida, USA and Research Center for Magnetic and Spintronic Materials at the National Institute for Materials Science, Japan. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers in high-profile journals, such as Nature Nanotechnology, Small, Nanoscale, and ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. His research group focuses on the design, synthesis and applications of advanced nanomaterials for thermoelectric, spintronic and biomedical applications, including magnetic hyperthermia therapy and drug delivery.
Dr. Philip Feng
Dr. Philip Feng's research group is primarily focused on emerging semiconductor devices and integrated micro/nanosystems, especially those in advanced semiconductors, 2D materials and heterostructures, as well as their heterogeneous integration with mainstream technologies. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Caltech. He was an invited participant at the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) 2013 U.S. Frontier of Engineering (USFOE) Symposium, and subsequently, a recipient of the NAE Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) Award in 2014. His recent awards include the NSF CAREER Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and several Best Paper Awards (with his students). He is an associate editor for IEEE Tran. Ultrason., Ferroelectr. & Freq. Control (T-UFFC), and served on Technical Program Committees (TPC) and as Track/Session Chairs for IEEE IEDM, IEEE MEMS, Transducers, IEEE IFCS, IEEE SENSORS, IEEE NANO, etc., and as the MEMS/NEMS Chair for AVS’ 61st to 63rd Int. Symposia.
Professor
University of Florida
Patti Gander
Patti Gander has both an MBA and a Master of Management. Ms. Gander has had over 35 years of experience in aerospace, defense and commercial manufacturing. She is a seasoned veteran having held positions of Vice President of Operations, General Manager, Director of Operations, Director of Application Engineering, Director of Quality and Operations Manager. Ms. Gander currently serves as the Executive Director for the Mid-Florida Manufacturing and Supply Chain Alliance (MSCA) as well as Business Advisor for FloridaMakes in that same region. In this dual role, her responsibilities are to reach out to the manufacturing community in the Mid-Florida region working with them to improve their operations in the areas of workforce development, technology, supply chain, strategic planning and business continuity planning or any other areas where the business owner may need a trusted advisor.
Executive Director
Mid-Florida Manufacture & Supply Chain Alliance (MSCA)
Business Advisor
FloridaMakes
Dr. Lisa Friedersdorf
Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office
Dr. Friedersdorf has been involved in nanotechnology for over twenty-five years, with a particular interest in advancing technology commercialization through university-industry-government collaboration. She is a strong advocate for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, and has over two decades of experience teaching at both the university and high school levels.
Lori Harvey
Manager, STEM Education
Outreach & CSR Programs
Hitachi High Tech America, Inc.
Ms. Harvey’s role is to develop globalization of the educational outreach program by defining partnerships and collaborations among industry, educators, policy makers, and others as required. Ms. Harvey previous engagement in the STEM and workforce development sector was as a Senior Program Manager of Education, Outreach and Workforce Development with Pennsylvania State University and The Department of Labor and Industry - Tri County Workforce Investment Board. Ms. Harvey collaborated with industry, government, K-12, post-secondary, and community organizations at the regional, state and national level supporting industry training, education and outreach. This combined engagement contributes to the development of creating a STEM / Workforce Development ecosystem for global competitiveness.
Dr. James Hickman
Professor
University of Central Florida
Dr. Hickman's research involves the creation of new test-beds of functional human-on-a-chip systems to investigate spinal cord repair, ALS, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other diseases. His lab has been heavily involved in integrating biological and cell-based systems with MEMs devices, primarily microelectronic devices.
Dr. Min Hong
Associate Professor
Liaocheng University
Dr. Min Hong graduated with a B.S. degree in chemistry from Liaocheng University in 2003. She then started a project on the nanobiological detection under the supervision of Professor Jin Zhu at Nanjing University, where she obtained her Ph.D. in 2009. She was a postdoc in Shandong Normal University from 2013 to 2016 and a visiting scholar in University of Florida in 2018−2019. She is now an associate professor in Department of Chemistry, Liaocheng University. Her research interest focuses on the detection and regulation of intracellular cancer marker.
Dr. David Hoogerheide
Physicist
National Institute of Standards Development
Dr. Hoogerheide joined NIST in 2013 during his joint research with NIH. In 2015 is joined NIST, Center for Neutron Research. His interests are in applications of neutron scattering to biological materials, novel platforms for neutron reflectivity measurements of membrane proteins, single-molecule methods for probing membrane proteins, and energy landscape modeling for nanopore capture of biopolymers.
Dr. Pierre Kondiah
Senior Lecturer
University of the Witwatersrand
South Africa
Dr. Kondiah completed a B. Pharm (Honors) in 2011 in the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of Witwatersrand. The primary focus of his research was the development and testing of a novel drug delivery system which can allow for therapeutically effective absorption of macromolecular (peptide) therapeutics that are traditionally administered parenterally, due to rapid degradation within the gastrointestinal tract.
Dr. Ratnesh Lal
Co-Director of Center for Excellence in Nanomedicine and Engineering
Univ. of California, San Diego
Dr. Lal is a Professor of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, Material Science & Engineering, and Co-Director of Center for Excellence in Nanomedcine and Engineering at UC San Diego. He received his MS and Masters of Philosophy in Physics and Biophysics from JNU in New Delhi and his Ph.D. in Neurobiology from the University of Alabama. After postdoctoral training at Caltech, he was a faculty member at the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Before accepting his current position at UC San Diego, he was a professor and the director of the newly established Center of Nanomedicine at the University of Chicago.
Dr. Chenzhong Li
Professor
Florida International University
Dr. Li is a full professor and the Director of the Nanobioengineering/ Bioelectronics Lab at FIU and the Program Director of the Biosensing program at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Li is an expert in biomedical devices in particular for Point of Care Testings and cell/organ on a chip. The research activities of Dr. Li have resulted in 10 patents, more than 130 peer-reviewed journal papers, 2 books, 8 book chapters, and over 150 presentations at conferences and about 100 keynote/invited lectures and seminars.
Dr. Donald K. Martin
Professor
University Grenoble Alpes
France
Dr. Martin is a Professor of Nanobiotechnologies at the University Grenoble Alpes (Faculty of Pharmacy). He is the Head of the research group SyNaBi in the Laboratory TIMC-IMAG, and he also has an honorary appointment at the University of Melbourne (Australia). His formal training was in Australia and includes a bachelor’s degree in optometry, a master’s degree in biomedical engineering and a PhD in biomechanics of contact lenses/biophysics of the anterior eye from the University of New South Wales (Australia).
Dr. Thanh Duc Nguyen
Dr. Nguyen joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2016. His research is highly interdisciplinary and at the interface of biomedicine, materials and nano/micro technology. His postdoc research was to develop a platform technology which can create three-dimensional microstructures of biomaterials such as biodegradable and FDA-approved polymers for applications in vaccine/drug delivery and medical implants.
Assistant Professor
University of Connecticut
Dr. David Rampulla
Program Director
National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
Dr. Rampulla manages programs in biomaterials, in delivery systems and devices for drugs and biologics, and a more recently established program in synthetic biology for technology development. He was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and has research experience in academia, government, and industry. His research career spanned both basic and applied sciences and the common thread throughout was investigating phenomena at surfaces and interfaces.
Dr. Kelley Rogers
Technical Program Manager
National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals
NIST
Dr. Rogers earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and a B.A. in Chemistry from Hendrix College, and was a post-doctoral and staff fellow in the National Institute of Digestive, Diabetes, and Kidney Diseases, at the National Institutes of Health. Her research expertise is in bacterial protein synthesis and cell signaling pathways. After completing her fellowship at the NIH, Kelley worked in industry as Principal Investigator identifying novel targets for antimicrobial drugs.
Dr. Paul Sheehan
Program Manager
DARPA Biological Technologies Office
Dr. Sheehan aims to enable the interconversion of biochemical and electronic information, use nanostructures to control cells and biomolecules, and create new approaches for rapidly developing and manufacturing bioassays. Prior to his role at DARPA, he researched areas in the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory as head of the Surface Nanoscience and Sensor Technology Section.
Dr. Thomas Webster
Professor
Northeastern University
Dr. Webster’s degrees are in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and in biomedical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (M.S., 1997; Ph.D., 2000). Dr. Webster has graduated/supervised over 149 students. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Nanomedicine (pioneering the open-access format). Dr. Webster currently directs or co-directs several centers in the area of biomaterials: The Center for Pico and Nanomedicine (Wenzhou China) and The International Materials Research Center (Soochow, China). He regularly appears on NBC, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and BBC News talking about science and medicine.
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