Professor Mark R. Prausnitz is a Regents' Professor and the Love Family Professor in Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering in the School of Chemical & Bimolecular Engineering. He received his B.S. in 1988 from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Prausnitz and his colleagues carry out research on biophysical methods of drug delivery, which employ microneedles, ultrasound, lasers, electric fields, heat, convective forces and other physical means to control the transport of drugs, proteins, genes and vaccines into and within the body. A major area of focus involves the use of microneedle patches to apply vaccines to the skin in a painless, minimally invasive manner. In collaboration with Emory University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other organizations, Professor Prausnitz's group is advancing microneedles from device design and fabrication through pharmaceutical formulation and pre-clinical animal studies through studies in human subjects. In addition to developing a self-administered influenza vaccine using microneedles, Professor Prausnitz is translating microneedle technology especially to make vaccination in developing countries more effective. The Prausnitz group has also developed hollow microneedles for injection into the skin and into the eye in collaboration with Emory University. In the skin, research focuses on insulin administration to human diabetic patients to increase onset of action by targeting insulin delivery to the skin. In the eye, hollow microneedles enable precise targeting of injection to the suprachoroidal space and other intraocular tissues for minimally invasive delivery to treat macular degeneration and other retinal diseases. Professor Prausnitz and colleagues also study novel mechanisms to deliver proteins, DNA and other molecules into cells. Cavitation bubble activity generated by ultrasound and by laser-excitation of carbon nanoparticles breaks open a small section of the cell membrane and thereby enables entry of molecules, which is useful for gene-based therapies and targeted drug delivery. In addition to research activities, Professor Prausnitz teaches an introductory course on engineering calculations, as well as two advanced courses on pharmaceuticals and technical communication, both of which he developed. He also serves the broader scientific and business communities as a frequent consultant, advisory board member and expert witness.

Faces of Research - Profile Article

Oliver Pierron joined Georgia Tech in summer 2007. Prior, he was a senior engineer at the R&D center of Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. in San Jose, California. Pierron's research group investigates the mechanical properties of small-scale materials with emphasis on the degradation properties (fracture, fatigue, creep). The scientific contribution of this research is to develop a fundamental understanding of the degradation mechanisms at the nanoscale while the engineering motivation is to assess and predict the structural reliability of devices and systems fabricated with emerging technologies. An underlying challenge is to develop experimental techniques that permit to accurately measure these properties. Pierron's research is currently sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Seung-Joon Paik received his B.S. degree at the School of Electrical Engineering in 1999 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. His doctorate research focused on the design, microfabrication and testing of silicon microneedles for neurophysiologic applications, including microfluidic channels and microelectrodes. He was with Automation and Systems Research Institute in Seoul National University, as a postdoctoral associate from 2005 to 2007, where he developed sensors and systems of Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for localization and locomotion of robots. After joining a spin-off company from the research lab, SML Electronics, Inc., in 2007, he led the process team for the 8-inch wafer-level packaging process and foundry manufacturing process of MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes for mobile applications as a senior research engineer. In 2008, he joined the MicroSensors and MicroActuators Laboratory (MSMA Lab.) in Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia. He has led the BioMEMS research group at the MSMA Lab as a postdoctoral fellow. The BioMEMS research group is dedicated to developing micro/nano needles and biosensors for drug delivery and electrochemical sensing. In 2013, as a research engineer II at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) in Georgia Tech, he oversees and coordinates lab sections for College of Engineering courses within IEN which provides instructions to students about CMOS transistor fabrication and MEMS fabrication. He has been teaching and mentoring junior-level research engineers and graduate students on design, analysis, micromachining processes, and technical writing and presentation at Seoul National University, SML Electronics, and Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2014, he also worked in Southern Polytechnic State University (currently, Kennesaw State University) as an adjunct professor and taught a course of Microelectronic Engineering and its labs.

He has published 65+ reviewed journal and conference papers, and invented 13+ patents in USA and Korea, and has been a reviewer for the following Journals – IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (JMEMS); IOP Journals of Micromechanics and Microengineering, Nanotechnology, Material Science and Technology, Journal of Physics D, and Smart Materials and Structures; and Sensors and Actuators A: Physics. His current interests are in research and development for the micromachining of silicon and polymer materials and in biomedical applications of micromachined devices and also in inertial sensors, 3-D multi-chip packaging of MEMS devices, energy storage/conversion devices and nano-scale structures.

Azad Naeemi received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University, Tehran, Iran in 1994, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga. in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

Prior to his graduate studies (from 1994 to 1999), he was a design engineer with Partban and Afratab Companies, both located in Tehran, Iran. He worked as a research engineer in the Microelectronics Research Center at Georgia Tech from 2004 to 2008 and joined the ECE faculty at Georgia Tech in fall 2008.

His research crosses the boundaries of materials, devices, circuits, and systems investigating integrated circuits based on conventional and emerging nanoelectronic and spintronic devices and interconnects. He is the recipient of the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) Paul Rappaport Award for the best paper that appeared in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices during 2007. He is also the first recipient of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society James D. Meindl Innovators Award (2022). He has received an NSF CAREER Award, an SRC Inventor Recognition Award, and several best paper awards at international conferences.

Saibal Mukhopadhyay received the bachelor of engineering degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India in 2000 and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in August 2006. He joined the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology in September 2007. Mukhopadhyay worked at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, N.Y. as research staff member from August 2006 to September 2007 and as an intern in summers of 2003, 2004, and 2005. At IBM, his research primarily focused on technology-circuit co-design methodologies for low-power and variation tolerant static random access memory (SRAM) in sub-65nm silicon technologies. Mukhopadhyay has (co)-authored over 90 papers in reputed conferences and journals and filed seven United States patents

Martin Mourigal received the B.S in Materials from Ecole des Mines de Nancy in 2004. He later received his M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Ecole Polytechnique Federale (EPFL) located in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2007 and 2011, respectively. He was also a postdoctoral research fellow in John Hopkins University from 2011 until 2014. He joined Georgia Tech in 2015 and is currently an assistant professor in the School of Physics. Mourigal's lab focuses on the study of collective electronic and magnetic phenomena in quantum materials. His research exploits the unique strengths of neutron and X-ray scattering to probe the organization and the dynamics of matter at the nanoscale.In addition to his own lab research, Mourigal is the co-director of the Georgia Tech Quantum Alliance, a university wide program that will work towards solving problems in optimization, cryptography, and artificial intelligence. Mourigal was awarded the Cullen Peck Faculty Scholar Award from Georgia Tech in 2019. He was also awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award for excellence as a young educator and researcher in 2018.

Nian Liu began as an Assistant Professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in January 2017. He received his B.S. in 2009 from Fudan University (China), and Ph.D. in 2014 from Stanford University, where he worked with Prof. Yi Cui on the structure design for Si anodes for high-energy Li-ion batteries. In 2014-2016, he worked with Prof. Steven Chu at Stanford University as a postdoc, where he developed in situ optical microscopy to probe beam-sensitive battery reactions. Dr. Liu 's lab at Georgia Tech is broadly interested in the combination of nanomaterials, electrochemistry, and light microscopy for understanding and addressing the global energy challenges. Dr. Liu is the recipient of the Electrochemical Society (ECS) Daniel Cubicciotti Award (2014) and American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Inorganic Chemistry Young Investigator Award (2015).

Sung Kyu Lim was born and grew up in Seoul, Korea, and moved to Los Angeles with his family at the age of 19. He received B.S. (1994), M.S. (1997), and Ph.D. (2000) degrees all from the Computer Science Department of University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). During 2000-2001, he was a post-doctoral scholar at UCLA, and a senior engineer at Aplus Design Technologies, Inc. In August 2001, he joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology an assistant professor. He is currently the director of the GTCAD (Georgia Tech Computer Aided Design) Laboratory at the School. He recently released a CD with his rock band in Los Angeles and spends his leisure time writing/recording music

Dr. Wilbur Lam received his B.A. from Rice University in 1995, his M.D. from the Baylor College of Medicine in 1999 and his Ph.D. from the University of California,San Francisco/University of California, Berkeley Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering in 2008. He completed his Residency in Pediatrics from UCSF in 2002 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley from 2008-2010. Dr. Lam's research involves integrating microtechnology ,development, experimental hematology and oncology and clinical medicine. His interdisciplinary laboratory, comprising clinicians, engineers, and biologists, is dedicated to applying and developing micro/nanotechnologies to study, diagnose, and treat blood disorders, cancer, and childhood diseases. This unique "basement to bench to bedside" approach to biomedical research is enabled by our lab's dual locations at the Emory University School of Medicine and the Georgia Institute of Technology and our affiliations with the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta hospitals.

Dr. Gabe Kwong is a Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Tech School of Engineering and Emory School of Medicine. His research program is conducted at the interface of the life sciences, medicine and engineering where a central focus is understanding how to harness the sophisticated defense mechanisms of immune cells to eradicate disease and provide protective immunity. Kwong has pioneered numerous biomedical technologies and published in leading scientific journals such as Nature Biotechnology and Nature Medicine. His work has been profiled broadly including coverage in The Economist, NPR, BBC, and WGBH-2, Boston 's PBS station. Professor Kwong earned his B.S. in Bioengineering with Highest Honors from the University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from California Institute of Technology with Professor James R. Heath. He conducted postdoctoral studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor Sangeeta N. Bhatia. For his work, Dr. Kwong has been awarded the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award, named a "Future Leader in Cancer Research and Translational Medicine" by the Massachusetts General Hospital, and awarded the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, a distinction given to the 10 most innovative bioengineers in the nation. Dr. Kwong holds seven issued or pending patents in cancer nanotechnology.