I am a rehabilitation neuroscientist keenly interested in the brain's capacity for change in response to rehabilitation after injury or in the context of disease. My work incorporates multimodal neuroimaging and neurostimulation approaches to investigate brain structure and function. The overarching aim of this work is to uncover the key neural substrates supporting motor control and motor learning to enable the design of optimal rehabilitation strategies to maximize recovery of function following neurologic injury.

Dr. Borodovsky and his group develop machine learning algorithms for computational analysis of biological sequences: DNA, RNA and proteins. Our primary focus is on prediction of protein-coding genes and regulatory sites in genomic DNA. Probabilistic models play an important role in the algorithm framework, given the probabilistic nature of biological sequence evolution.

Andreas (Andy) S. Bommarius is a professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as well of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA.  He received his diploma in Chemistry in 1984 at the Technical University of Munich, Germany and his Chemical Engineering B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1982 and 1989 at MIT, Cambridge, MA.

From 1990-2000, he led the Laboratory of Enzyme Catalysis at Degussa (now Evonik) in Wolfgang, Germany, where his work ranged from immobilizing homogenous catalysts in membrane reactors to large-scale cofactor-regenerated redox reactions to pharma intermediates.

At Georgia Tech since 2000, his research interests cover green chemistry and biomolecular engineering, specifically biocatalyst development and protein stability studies.  His lab applies data-driven protein engineering to improve protein properties on catalysts ranging from ene and nitro reductases to cellobiohydrolases.  Bommarius has guided the repositioning of the curriculum towards Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering by developing new courses in Process Design, Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering, as well as Drug Design, Development, and Delivery (D4), an interdisciplinary course with Mark Prausnitz.

Andy Bommarius in 2008 became a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.  Since 2010, he is Director of the NSF-I/UCR Center for Pharmaceutical Development (CPD), a Center focusing on process development, drug substance and product stability, and novel analytical methods for the characterization of drug substances and excipients.

The Blazeck Lab tackles challenges at the interface of immunology, engineering, and metabolism to improve human health. We utilize our expertise in cellular and protein engineering to control biological function and to develop novel therapies to fight disease.

Synthetic Immune Systems

Our immune system uses very complex processes to make exquisitely specific receptors that recognize disease causing agents, and much of our ability to fight diseases is contingent upon the development of a diverse repertoire of immune receptors. Many questions remain unanswered about these immune receptors. For instance, at a population level, can we characterize the millions of receptors each person makes? And then further determine which of these millions of receptors is most important towards recognizing and targeting a pathogen? And can we control the generation of immune receptors to have desired properties? We are striving to answer these questions by harnessing our immune system’s power in a synthetic setting to improve understanding and treatment options for numerous diseases, while developing applications for vaccine design, personalized medicine, and enzyme engineering.

Engineering Cellular Therapies

Immunotherapies are treatments designed to modulate the immune response that have shown astounding clinical potential, yet there are no current treatments with guaranteed success. We are working to engineer cellular systems with controllable, enhanced, and non-native functions that improve their impact and capability. By developing high throughput technologies to interrogate immune function, we hope to translate our findings into improvements in the next generation of cellular therapeutics. 

Developing Proteins that Fight Cancer and Control Metabolism

It is widely accepted that cancer cells have a significantly altered genomic and metabolic makeup relative to normal cells, but how can we best target these differences? By combining our expertise in metabolism and therapeutic protein engineering, are working to engineer proteins to directly target and fight cancer. For instance, certain enzymes can control the metabolic environment around tumors to inhibit their growth or to stimulate a native anti-cancer immune response. We utilize directed evolution approaches to optimize protein function and efficacy.

Dr. Pamela Bhatti is Professor and Associate Chair for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech. Her research is dedicated to overcoming sensory loss in human hearing through focused neural stimulation, and novel implantable sensors. Dr. Bhatti also conducts research in cardiac imaging to assess and monitor cardiovascular disease. She received her B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley (1989), her M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington (1993), and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2006). In 2013, she earned an M.S. in Clinical Research from Emory University, and co-founded a startup company (Camerad Technologies) based on her research in detecting wrong-patient errors in radiology. Dr. Bhatti is the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, Editor-in-Chief; and, in 2017, received the Georgia Tech Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award.

Saad Bhamla studies biomechanics across species to engineer knowledge and tools that inspire curiosity.

Saad Bhamla is an assistant professor of biomolecular engineering at Georgia Tech. A self-proclaimed "tinkerer," his lab is a trove of discoveries and inventions that span biology, physics and engineering. His current projects include studying the hydrodynamics of insect urine, worm blob locomotion and ultra-low-cost devices for global health. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Economist, CNN, Wired, NPR, the Wall Street Journal and more.

Saad is a prolific inventor and his most notable inventions includes a 20-cent paper centrifuge, a 23-cent electroporator, and the 96-cent hearing aid. Saad's work is recognised by numerous awards including a NIH R35 Outstanding Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award, CTL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, and INDEX: Design to Improve Life Award. Saad is also a National Geographic Explorer and a TED speaker. Newsweek recognized Saad as 1 of 10 Innovators disrupting healthcare.

Saad is a co-founder of Piezo Therapeutics.

Outside of the lab, Saad loves to go hiking with his partner and two dogs (Ollie and Bella).

Paul Benkeser is a professor and senior associate chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. A member of the Georgia Tech faculty since 1985, he was one of the founding faculty of the Coulter Department in 1998 and served as its first associate chair for undergraduate studies.    

His early research interests were in therapeutic and diagnostic applications of ultrasound. After joining the Coulter Department he redirected his energies toward enhancing undergraduate biomedical engineering  education, with particular interests in integrating problem-driven learning and global experiential learning opportunities in the curriculum. His research and education endeavors have been funded by grants from NIH, NSF, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Whitaker Foundation.    

Dr. Benkeser has been active in engineering accreditation activities for ABET since 2002, serving in a number of capacities including program evaluator, EAC Commissioner, and member of its board of delegates. He is a member of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Society, and American Society for Engineering Education, and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.    

He received his BS from Purdue University and MS and PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in electrical engineering.

Guy Benian is a professor of cell biology and pathology in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. His research focus is on myofibril assembly and maintenance in the model genetic system, Caenorhabditis elegans; focus on the functions and structures of giant multi-domain proteins, and the mechanism by which myofibrils are attached to the muscle cell membrane and transmit force.