Meet UW-Madison Innovators
Reid Alisch
“What you eat, your life experiences, how much you exercise, all of these things can modify your DNA methylation levels. DNA methylation doesn’t change your DNA, but the presence or absence of DNA methylation can change the way your DNA is used and whether or how much genes are expressed.”
Joseph Andrews
“We’re printing devices and electronics that have been previously investigated, but now we can print them in ways you can’t achieve with conventional techniques. We know how these sensors will work and operate, but through printing them, or using other flexible electronics fabrication techniques, we can apply these sensors to new fields.”
Jean-Michel Ane
“My work aims to improve the productivity and sustainability of agriculture through microbes, trying to replace chemicals and fertilizers with microbe-based solutions that will hopefully be less damaging to the environment, limit nitrogen leaching, and limit the production of greenhouse gasses."
Mike Arnold
“Carbon promises to transform what computers and communications devices like cell phones can accomplish for people, by enabling faster, more energy efficient electronics and also new forms of electronics that are flexible, stretchable or transparent."
Randolph Ashton
“My lab’s research has the potential to transform medicine from treating the symptoms of neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., Spina Bifida and Autism Spectrum Disorder) to preventing them all together or significantly mitigating their severity."
Mei Baker
“Solving immediate problems is in my blood, and I’m interested in translational research that has a clinical impact. When I have a problem in front of me, I’ll find a solution. I love it. I feel very lucky to be in a position to solve problems.”
David Beebe
“My research into microfluidic technologies and microenvironments has led to the development of multiple research tools, as well as streamlined point-of-care and lab-based diagnostics.”
Nader Behdad
“There are two things that I particularly enjoy about my work. The first one is the constant opportunity to learn new things. The second thing I really like about my job is the opportunity to work with and mentor so many bright students and postdocs.”
Aarushi Bhargava
"Ultimately, I hope to use ultrasound as a noninvasive way to target and break down fibrotic environments and abnormally stiff extracellular matrices, which are common features in many diseases. Through ultrasound cavitation—using oscillating bubbles—we can mechanically modulate these fibrous networks, temporarily or permanently."
Emily Bick
"I’m hoping to be able to provide a cost-effective, skilled labor-free experience for farmers, so they can put out sensors, in complement to scouting fields, and get better pest information, which leads to data-driven pest responses."
Guelay Bilen-Rosas
“The reason I wake up every day to work on this technology is because one day it will benefit our patients in a way that we cannot even comprehend yet. Our mission has been the prevention of breathing deterioration into respiratory failure—and breathing is complex, way beyond the traditional counting of respiratory rates."
Helen Blackwell
“I would love our findings to contribute to the understanding of how bacteria interact in their myriad natural environments and how we can harness these interactions to treat infectious disease. I hope to continue to work with students here at UW to discover chemical approaches to decipher these bacterial interactions.”
Matthew E. Brown
"Right now, I’m most excited about hypoimmune gene editing. We’ve developed a new gene edit to protect cell therapies from being recognized by a recipient’s immune system...we designed this edit using our immunology expertise to be a new class of next-generation approach that hasn’t been done yet.”
Christian Capitini
“The excitement of this kind of technology...is the fact that cells from our body are being synthetically engineered and designated as drugs by the FDA, and now, it’s not about pills or infusions; it’s about personalized medicine—weaponizing a patient’s immune system against cancer or other diseases."
Guang-Hong Chen
"My ultimate goal is to revolutionize the way patients are diagnosed and treated. I strive to develop innovative imaging and treatment methods that are accurate and also personalized to each individual."
Kyoung-Shin Choi
“We hope to achieve environmentally benign production of fuels, chemicals and clean water, using renewable energy sources (i.e., solar, biomass). We also want to enable resource recovery from waste, where species that contaminate the environment are removed and recovered as useful chemicals."
Joshua Coon
"I’m interested in building tools and using them to solve problems. We can learn about biological systems and contribute to science, and we can also create a new technology tool and get it into the hands of everyone in the world who’s doing science."
Mahua Dey
"What’s currently most exciting is a personalized, gene-modified tumor vaccine we developed from patient tumor cells that can super charge an aging immune system to better attack cancer cells. We’re really excited about moving it into the clinical realm in an early phase clinical trial to offer hope to brain cancer patients."
Timothy Donohue
"As a microbiologist, the combination of genomics and technology has provided us with new and exciting ways to identify the building blocks of microbial systems, how they are assembled into networks, and consider how to mix or alter these blocks to build new capabilities. I think there is no better place to do this than UW-Madison."
Joao Dorea
“By developing technology for the agriculture sector, I’m excited about the opportunity to translate and use technologies and AI to help farmers improve their decision-making and optimize animal monitoring, health and welfare. It’s very cool to apply the technology we see in hospitals and grocery stores to agriculture and see it working there.”
Beth Drolet
"I study vascular anomalies, which were traditionally considered birth defects that could only be treated with surgery or destruction of the malformed tissue. We found that in a birthmark, there’s a gene mutation that’s not in any other part of your body, and that’s what causes abnormal development and growth of blood vessels—that mutation drives cells to behave differently."
Jeff Endelman
“We want to create potato varieties that have a transformative impact on agriculture, and there’s a lot of software and technology development to help us realize that goal–that’s the interplay between the two parts of the research. The applied science drives the basic science–we want to be more effective at delivering genetic solutions to farmers.”
Mark Eriksson
“We’re working on ways to use semiconductors, specifically silicon-based semiconductors, to make quantum bits. You can use the same materials and processing techniques in a cleanroom that you use to make a classical computer chip, but the chip is made in different ways and needs different technology to go into it."
Melih Eriten
“For the past decade or so, my group has been trying to understand the response of materials surfaces under extreme conditions...For instance, we’re currently producing a prototype of a sensor that can detect nonstationary and nonlinear responses of soft materials when you’re cutting or peeling them at high speeds.”
Marianne Fairbanks
“My goal is to create new ideas bound to weaving, sculpture and material-based innovations. I opened Weaving Lab in the WID in 2016 to have a public-facing research space where we could ask questions in community. When visitors did not have time to weave on a floor loom, I wanted to hand them something they could take with them, like a portable loom.”
Dawei Feng
“From a company perspective, we envision becoming a major player in the market of green energy storage and evolving into a research institute to address critical problems. We hope we can be an example of combining fundamental knowledge with practical applications. From a research perspective, I hope we will continue to do innovative research.”
Brian Fox
"Using our cell-free protein synthesis platforms, we can quickly functionally characterize enzymes and document their structure. We take this important basic research further by narrowing down the enzyme variants that have useful properties for advancing bioeconomy applications.”
Jacques Galipeau
"We’re working with a new class of technologies, living therapeutics, with use cases in cancer therapeutics and autoimmune diseases, which is very exciting. We’ve shown that we can take an idea from the whiteboard to getting a federal license to initiate the first human clinical trials to de-risk these platforms and impact human outcomes.”
David Gamm
“I want to understand how retinas are made and why different diseases cause them to fail and degenerate. Ultimately, our aim is to apply that knowledge to manufacture more authentic human retinal cell types and tissues that can be used to advance therapies for people at every stage of disease."
John Garrett
“Medical imaging is an amazing tool that can generate so much information about a patient. CT scans, in particular, provide tremendous high resolution and quantitative images, though they require small amounts of ionizing radiation to acquire. We’re working on methods and tools to make the most of that information and potentially save a need for repeated or additional scans."
Audrey Gasch
“I love thinking about the dynamic puzzle that is a living, breathing organism–it’s super gratifying to contribute to knowledge of cells and human aging. I love doing collaborative science, getting to work with students and postdocs, and the camaraderie of shared deep thinking."
Ying Ge
“I really hope to achieve a paradigm shift in how we diagnose disease, and my ultimate goal is to establish top-down proteomics for early diagnosis and precision medicine. New tools help us understand the body at the molecular level to capture disease early and provide more precise treatment.”
Amanda Gevens
"As the University of Wisconsin Extension Potato and Vegetable Pathologist, my program supports vegetable growers by providing research-based recommendations for controlling diseases during production and in storage. My research program directly feeds into my extension work.”
Tony Goldberg
“I like discovering things, specifically finding either new pathogens or new epidemiological trends that no one has observed before. I hope to bring the methods used to identify and understand new pathogens of all types to the mainstream, so they can be adopted by others and commercialized, and improve diagnostics and global health.”
Irwin Goldman
“Horticulture is really about the connection between humans and plants, so we’re making varieties of crops humans will eat and hopefully enjoy. That connection is the most meaningful and most interesting part of my research–we really have to think about what people might like and how to interest them in it.”
Shaoqin “Sarah” Gong
"By designing and synthesizing innovative drug/gene delivery systems and tissue engineering scaffolds, our research has the potential to create new gene/genome editing therapies that can cure the root causes of genetic diseases or new cell therapies that can fight against blindness.”
Padma Gopalan
“Many of the materials we have developed are already being used in the semiconductor industry to enable the fabrication of small features. The application profile of the aligned carbon nanotubes on a silicon wafer is also far-reaching, with potential impacts in next-generation logic chips, radio frequency amplifiers and beyond.”
Jenny Gumperz
"Our work relates to using immune cells to fight cancer. We are developing a very different approach to do this–it involves activating the T lymphocytes of cancer patients in a very specific way to fight cancer."
Sundaram Gunasekaran
"Research is pursuing answers to unanswered questions and pushing at the edge of science. The process of discovering the scientific underpinnings of what we are studying and developing tools and technologies to support that pursuit is very satisfying.”
Wei Guo
“Our goal is to use a molecular and cellular approach, combined with synthetic biology, to develop small molecules or compounds that can modify the size of specific proteins responsible for heart stiffness. By doing so, we aim to reduce cardiac stiffness and improve heart flexibility."
Chirag Gupta
“The work I do in my lab has many real-world use applications, and the technology we develop has the potential to be useful in the real world. I do more applied physics–that excites me the most–and with WARF on campus, making things simple for researchers to invent and get help commercializing stuff, there are many ways to get inventions out into the world.”
Mahima Gupta
“Embracing a big picture, holistic approach, I ask myself, can we design power converters to be nearly 100% efficient; fit in the smallest possible amount of space; live a long life, so you only buy them once; and make them good electronic citizens that don’t disturb other devices?"
Mohit Gupta
"I work with cameras, which capture light, and to build the best camera, you need to understand how light interacts with the world and then with cameras, which is really physics. What happens before an image is formed is physics, and what happens after an image is formed is computer science."
Susan Hagness
"It’s exciting to work on cross-disciplinary problems that are interesting and challenging from an academic perspective and fundamentally important from a societal perspective—and to do so within a collaborative campus environment that provides a huge breadth of expertise."
Aviad Hai
“Our lab focuses on disrupting the status quo of neuroscience and neurology, using cutting-edge wireless injectable electronics. We have developed very small components that don’t require wires and harvest power and energy from the outside. We’re getting to a point where we can help patients with neurological disorders without major surgery."
Jesse Hampton
“I’d like to explore several new areas: One is the application of data science and remote sensing in geological engineering and infrastructure problems. We’ve gotten really good at being able to collect data over the past few decades, but we haven’t been able to fully harness all of the information yet.”
Jo Handelsman
“This is such an exciting time to do biology because the methods we have today facilitate answering questions we have wondered about for years. Without the right tools, understanding how microbes function as members of communities was out of reach. Not anymore!”
Laura Hernandez
“I am dedicated to helping pregnant and lactating women, who are an understudied and under-supported population. Our work is focused on understanding how SSRI and depression may impact their pregnancy and breastfeeding success, as well as long-term impacts on their babies and how we offer alternatives to ensure the overall health and well-being of mom and baby.”
Jiamian Hu
"I create new computer models to design materials and devices. When we design devices, we consider the influence of materials microstructures, making device modeling more accurate and discovering new functionality through the creation and control of interfaces between monolithic materials components."
Quanyin Hu
“We want to develop a basic drug delivery system with enhanced efficacy and minimal toxicity. When we design our projects, we always think about the patient first and designing delivery system that can have real impacts on patients.”
George Huber
“We hope to design new technologies that will allow us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, recycle more plastics and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”
Christina Hull
"If a spore enters the lung, it’s not going to cause disease unless it can grow. If we develop drugs to prevent fungi from getting a foothold in the first place by inhibiting spore germination, we can prevent many fatal diseases in vulnerable patients and ultimately save lives.”
David Jarrard
“Our mission is to make discoveries that will improve the way we diagnose, prevent and treat prostate cancer. One aspect of our lab deals with coming up with better and earlier approaches to diagnosing prostate cancer non-invasively. "
Robert Jeraj
“The ultimate goal of medical physics is always improving lives of patients. Specific to our research, we hope to be able to better predict how a particular treatment will work, how we can optimize a given treatment and ultimately derive the most appropriate treatment strategy, given patient and physician preferences.”
Hongrui Jiang
“We are currently working on a laparoscopic imaging system and wearable devices for older adults. We hope our work will shift the paradigm, both for visualization during laparoscopic surgery, and for the detection and progression monitoring of diseases related to aging.”
Shawn Kaeppler
“Broadly, our society and our planet face challenges like climate change, needing to feed people, human health and protecting our environment with clean water and healthy soils. Within that context, my vision is to continue to find ways to apply our research and discover new things and try to translate them into systems.”
Tim Kamp
“Our lab is dedicated to understanding certain forms of heart disease—arrhythmias and heart failure. We’re digging into the mechanisms of those diseases to try to improve therapeutic approaches and find new ways to improve the adult human heart’s ability to regenerate."
Mikhail Kats
“My group aims to develop optical components to efficiently emit, modulate and detect light, especially in the infrared regime, for applications including night vision, quantum sensing, chemical and gas detection, and thermal management.”
Randall Kimple
“My goal is for the things we do in our lab to impact the patients I see in clinic, and we have multiple projects where that is the case. It is incredibly fun and exciting to be at the point, after 14 years on the faculty here, where everyone in the lab can see that we’re doing things that have direct translational impact, that can truly impact the lives of cancer patients."
Laura Knoll
“I would really like to be able to develop a cat vaccine (projective immune boost) that people could give their cats to block transmission of toxoplasmosis and help pregnant people feel comfortable with their cats. That would be awesome.”
Bhuvana Krishnaswamy
"To learn more about areas that aren’t densely populated, like oceans and deserts, we can study them through deploying sensors or new monitoring equipment. In remote locations, deploying battery-powered devices that can last for months is a challenging problem. Much of our research focuses on low power wireless communications.”
Glen Kwon
“Combination therapy is central to cancer treatment. We are using nanoparticles to co-deliver multiple drugs directly to tumors, like reformulating toxic drugs, such as paclitaxel. By packaging different therapies into a single nanoparticle ready for entry into clinical trials, we aim to achieve synergistic effects and minimize harm to healthy tissues.”
Ci Ji Lim
“My lab studies how the chromosomes in human systems are being managed or maintained. We study this complicated process in an interdisciplinary way, using a range of techniques: biochemistry, cell biology, biophysical techniques and enzymology."
John Lucey
“I want to be able to tailor, or precisely control, the functionality of dairy products, to meet the complex needs of consumers. I want every drop of milk produced by farmers to be used for a value-added purpose and to have no waste. I want to help the industry consistently make world-class products that are tasty and safe.”
Dan Ludois
“I’m trying to identify gaps in electromagnetism I can fill with unique electrostatic and capacitative technology. The first part of my career was motors and generators; the next stage of it is going to be wireless power transfer aspects and eventually aerial platforms.”
Kip Ludwig
“I got into this to help people, and I’m shooting for something revolutionary. Two of my projects could meet that goal: an injectable electrode that can isolate a nerve and noninvasively stimulating cranial nerves to improve brain clearance."
David Lynn
“One of the areas we’re particularly excited about now is the design of ‘slippery’ liquid-infused materials that offer new ways to prevent fouling by bacteria or other organisms and substances. The work we’re doing now is aimed at developing processes for the fabrication of slippery coatings that are scalable and more compatible with various types of manufacturing processes.”
Chu Ma
“Eventually, we want to bring the potential impact of our research to reality. For example, we’d like to turn the technology we’ve created into a product and help people. I have one patent already issued and two submitted through WARF, and I have a really early-stage company.”
Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma
"I enjoy doing research, and I’m not short on ideas...recent projects include the development of a micro-molded scaffolding photoreceptor “patch” designed to be implanted under a damaged or diseased retina."
Hiroshi Maeda
"Our society faces climate issues, food security, energy challenges and extreme weather. Plants can do remarkable work, sucking up CO2 and producing a variety of chemicals, simply using sunlight energy. By understanding how plants do this and utilizing this power, I’m optimistic we can address the pressing issues we’re facing today.”
Megan McClean
"Our work on fungal dispersion has the potential to contribute to therapeutics for diseases that are growing in prevalence and severity, particularly fungal diseases. Better control of cells also has implications for biotechnology. I think biomanufacturing has the potential to lessen our reliance on fossil fuels and allow implementation of greener production methods.”
Sara McCoy
“The effects of Sjӧgren’s disease are highly variable from individual to individual, so personalized medicine is very important. We’re always thinking about the next step in research and where we can take our findings to improve targeted medicine."
Robert McDermott
“We are learning how to engineer quantum systems more reliably, with fewer defects and imperfections, and we hope to achieve a level of fidelity that will allow us to perform calculations that would otherwise be impossible, even on the best available classical supercomputers. This will open the door to many interesting applications in areas like drug discovery, efficient energy harvesting and materials design.”
Dane Morgan
“I am most excited by the chance to design new materials with computational tools. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to have magical powers, and the ability to model and predict materials behavior with the computer seems about as close as one gets to magic in real life. "
Zachary Morris
“I’m excited about the development of new, more effective treatments for cancer patients. One approach that we’re testing to achieve this is the in situ vaccine effect, where we might use radiation at one site to stimulate immune recognition of a tumor, similar to a cancer vaccine."
Peter Muir
“I’m currently excited about our standing CT scanning startup, Asto CT, reaching a milestone of more than 10,000 patient scans across a growing client base of equine hospitals. It’s a great story of starting with a creative idea among faculty on campus, developing the idea into a product, and then getting the product established in the marketplace.”
William Murphy
“I’m excited about the area of therapeutic mRNA delivery because our recent studies have shown the technology’s tremendous potential–above and beyond what I would have expected. We’ve focused on tissue regeneration for the last 10 years, and we’ve shown we can promote the regeneration of cartilage, skeletal muscle, skin tissue and significantly injured spinal cords."
Muhammed Murtaza
“Eventually, we want people to collect blood samples in the clinic or at home, and we can analyze the DNA from those samples and make an assessment about cancer. Our vision is that this could enable more cost-effective, accessible, distributed cancer diagnostics.”
Sean Palecek
“We want to come up with ways to turn stem cells into cell types of interest, so we can get cells that work and do what they’re supposed to and are safe. To be able to make stem cell-derived therapies accessible, we need to come up with more efficient ways to make cells at a reasonable cost and large scale."
Xuejun Pan
“We have been studying the chemistry and processing of lignocellulosic biomass. I really hope to develop new technologies to produce chemicals, liquid fuels and materials from renewable resources like biomass to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels."
Shubhra Pasayat
“The positive impact that our research brings to everyday lives motivates me. Two examples of where we use Gallium nitride in our daily lives are highly efficient LED household lights and 5G base stations that enable fast data rates and fast chargers. The fact that every project we work on brings some positive change in the electronics that we use is quite exciting!"
Sabine Pellett
"One of my past achievements was developing a cell-based assay to replace mouse bioassays for the release of pharmaceutical BoNTs. This assay was patented in 2012 and licensed by a company and is now used widely, significantly reducing the number of animals used for pharmaceutical BoNT release and for research, which is a tangible difference. "
Mike Petersen
“I’d love to create some actual hemp plants that could subsequently go to market with some enhanced trait, like disease resistance, a trait that makes it more medically valuable, or anything that would make it stand out from a normal hemp plant in nature right now. Growing hemp on millions of acres would give farmers another choice of what to grow and more money in their pockets.”
Frank Pfefferkorn
“Our lab conducts fundamental research on solid-state metal additive manufacturing—printing things out of metal, but without melting. Our methods are well-suited for scaling up to print large objects, and it’s well suited for combining materials."
Brian Pfleger
“My group is trying to understand what prevents the field of biomanufacturing from having a larger market share and how to build the things we can demonstrate in the lab at scales that make sense. In the near future, I hope we can develop technologies that bring things in our field to market.”
Perry Pickhardt
“Opportunistic screening is when you take additional imaging data already present on CT imaging tests but generally unused, and then look at opportunities to leverage this information for the good of patient care. We now have automated CT tools to measure fat, muscle, bone and organ volumes, which can be used to screen for metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis."
David Plante
“The broader goal of my research is to identify causes of unexplained hypersomnolence and novel ways to treat these problems. I ultimately aim to improve the sleep health and quality of life for persons with sleep disorders.”
Pavana Prabhakar
“My research lies at the intersection of mechanics, manufacturing and materials. I am particularly excited by the ability to engineer lightweight composite materials for unique performance in extreme conditions, such as dynamic impact, fatigue, sub-zero temperatures, high humidity, excessive internal pressure and microbial exposure.”
Aurelie Rakotondrafara
“Recent studies suggest that plants respond to stress, like environmental conditions or pathogen attacks, by switching to non-canonical mechanisms to express their defense genes in a similar fashion as some viruses do. Thus, plant viruses can be great models to increase our basic understanding of the diversity of translation and cellular processes.”
Vatsan Raman
“This is an exciting time to be in biotechnology with such explosive growth. Biotechnology is changing the world at an astounding pace. Looking ahead, I aim to pursue research that not only advances scientific knowledge but also translates into real-world applications that benefit society.”
Amish Raval
"I’ve been a cardiologist for 24 years and done clinical trials and research for over 20 years. My real interest is finding therapies that will fundamentally alter injury in a favorable way at the tissue level and restore lost heart function, to reverse or prevent damage to the heart."
Scott Reeder
“We’re trying to transform medical imaging, and MRI in particular, into a quantitative method, where the image intensity actually reflects a property of tissue in a quantitative manner, one you can measure that both accurately and precisely."
Lonie Salkowski
“It’s exciting to see an idea you have come to fruition and then have residents use the system and learn from the feedback. It is great to see the residents taking the experience seriously and finding it valuable. This is especially true of the residents who have had serial simulation sessions and see their progress.”
Scott Sanders
“I’m excited about collaborating with colleagues to use tools in our lab to measure important properties related to manufacturing, quantum computing, physics, chemistry, electrical engineering and nuclear reactors. For example, we’re working on a sensor to detect hydrogen leaks, and we’re aiming to start a company with that technology.”
Bulent Sarlioglu
“We are in exciting times, where there are great opportunities for research to advance many emerging technologies, like electric vehicles and airplanes. Power electronics and electric machines are key enabling technologies with tremendous research opportunities in academia and industry.”
Miriam Shelef
“We’re hoping to achieve real, concrete benefits in preclinical rheumatoid arthritis. We know antibodies develop years before the development of autoimmune rheumatoid arthritis, and we need a marker of when RA is imminent. We’re trying to design a better diagnostic test, using biomarkers developed for WARF.”
Eric Shusta
"The newest set of brain targeting molecules we found through immunization and screening of lamprey antigen receptors (VLRs) target brain tissue that is exposed to the bloodstream during various neurological diseases. Targeting molecules like this don’t ferry cargo into the brain under normal conditions, but anywhere there’s a blood-brain barrier disruption, they can deliver drugs directly to the site of pathology.”
Melissa Skala
“My goal is to unravel the complexities of how the body works, and it’s a difficult problem because there are tons of tiny little pieces orchestrating this response. As an imaging person, I’m focused on unraveling those complexities in the most intact representative systems possible. Cells are amazing little machines, and it’s exciting to see what they do.”
Ahna Skop
“I’m excited about helping people diagnose cancer in early stages–I never thought it would be a possibility in my lifetime. I also enjoy mentoring students and seeing them experience how basic science can be translated to help people with cancer–and how hard you have to work to get there."
Igor Slukvin
“I envision that my research will be eventually translated into the clinic. I hope that we can initiate clinical trials with the stem cell-based immunotherapy technologies recently developed in my lab.”
Guri Sohi
“Being able to influence real commercial designs that are used by billions of people every day is exciting. I’ve been fortunate enough for nearly 40 years to be able to do that and develop different ways of solving the problems in the design of high-performance processors."
Shannon Stahl
“My central interest lies in understanding catalysis, which aligns with energy efficiency and sustainability. I get excited about understanding the fundamentals of catalysis and how those fundamentals come to fruition in practical applications."
Robert Strigel
“I hope to use breast MRI as a tool to diagnose and understand breast cancers, but also to help better define an individual woman’s risk for breast cancer, using MRI-specific features of breast tissue. I think that, in the future, MRI will have a role in risk prediction to inform appropriate screening modalities and intervals."
Krishnan Suresh
“I enjoy bridging theory and application. I’m trained in academia and worked in the industry for a few years. I publish our fundamental breakthroughs in leading journals. I like transforming abstract mathematical concepts into tangible, enduring solutions, often a software product, and I’ve worked with WARF to make those software products available to industry, students and researchers."
Michael Sussman
"In animals, almost every receptor is incredibly important. In plants, the large family of receptors and their hormones play critical roles in many aspects of plant metabolism, growth and development, although cell expansion is one of the more obvious. Plant cells are long, and they have to regulate their expansion very carefully.”
Aussie Suzuki
“Now that I’ve developed new technology that makes invisible structures visible, I want to use them to address biological questions in cell division, HIV-1 and EBV research. I also would like to continue to develop novel imaging technologies for future patents.”
Adel Talaat
"What excites me is that we can find solutions for current existing problems by vaccinating animals and humans, and the knowledge we are generating hopefully will be helpful in advancing vaccine development and finding cures for illnesses that should be avoidable."
Weiping Tang
“Some of our work will lead to new tools for other researchers to use, and some of our work may eventually lead to new therapeutics. I hope to contribute to the development of new drug discovery methods that can accelerate the drug development process and make it more efficient. This could include the development of new strategies, platforms and modalities.”
Darryl Thelen
“I’m excited to bring new and innovative tools to biomechanics researchers and practitioners. We’re currently working on a noninvasive wearable sensor to measure muscle forces that drive human movement. The sensor works by tracking miron-scale vibrations within the tissue and using that to assess the mechanical loading the tissue is undergoing.”
Ramathasan Thevamaran
"These discoveries enable us to innovate new material systems to tackle some of the most challenging problems we face; for example, preventing traumatic brain injury from collisions and creating strong and tough lightweight composites for the next generation of aerospace applications.”
Dan Thoma
"Most engineers get into the field to make an impact on society, and I’ve always been involved in energy applications—higher operating temperatures for higher efficiencies, or new materials and the next generation of fusion reactors for sustainable energy. These have big impacts.”
Pallavi Tiwari
“I’m excited about using AI and machine learning in the context of multimodal data–imaging and digital pathology—and combining disparate sources of info to create models that provide diagnostic, prognostic and predictive information. For patients, can we predict the outcome of a drug and recurrence of disease?"
Jan-Peter (JP) van Pijkeren
"I really love basic science–thinking about mechanisms that relate to probiosis and microbial ecology, while, at the same time, thinking of approaches to apply such mechanisms toward a next-gen therapeutic or probiotic. To test the next-gen probiotics, we are working with different partners in academia and industry to further enhance strain development.”
Andreas Velten
"I always like figuring out how things work and using my knowledge to build something functional that can do things people couldn’t do before. That’s also where images are really powerful. The most exciting data, once you make an image or video out of it, is much easier to understand and clicks with people much better."
Giri Venkataramanan
"Our survival and ability to thrive as a human race depends on energy, so I feel like I’m a 21st century coal miner. I’m not creating energy, but I’m working to make sure it’s in a form people want to use, convenient and available. Today, electricity is energy’s most convenient form."
Bu Wang
"Our goal is to produce low-cost, carbon-negative cementitious materials that can be readily used by current concrete construction practices. This will provide dual benefits of removing carbon dioxide from the air and reducing the usage of cement, a carbon-intensive material."
Xudong Wang
"What I’m really excited about is tying my fundamental materials research to practical human health issues, to benefit human beings. My research group is developing safe materials and devices that can go into different parts of the human body (skin, tissue, organs, bone) and convert body motions into electricity."
Wei Xu
"I’m a breast cancer researcher working to improve targeted and personalized treatment for breast cancer. While many patients initially respond well to treatment, developing resistance remains a critical challenge. My research focuses on uncovering the mechanisms behind this resistance and investigating how tumors evolve to evade therapy."
Filiz Yesilkoy
"We develop new biophotonic sensing and imaging technologies to enhance clinical diagnostics capabilities and provide advanced analytical tools for biomedical research. We use nanotechnology to innovate new photonic devices that can control light’s properties at the nanoscale and enhance biomolecules’ interaction with light. "
Xiangyao Yu
“I work on databases—storing, managing and getting insights from data. Data is becoming a foundation of our society—the advancement of computer sciences is increasing driven by the expanding volume of data. This makes it an exciting time to work on database optimizations in various aspects.”