Michael Davis

Michael Davis
michael.davis@bme.gatech.edu

Dr. Davis holds positions as a Professor in both Cardiology and Biomedical Engineering at the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Additionally, he serves as an associate chair for graduate studies at BME department, and a director of the Children's Heart Research and Outcomes (HeRO) Center. He received his Ph.D. in Molecular and Systems Pharmacology at Emory University in 2003 working on molecular regulation of eNOS expression by shear stress. From 2003-2006, he completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital working on cardiac tissue engineering with collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He moved back to Emory in 2006 to join the faculty in Division of Cardiology and Biomedical Engineering Department.

Professor
Associate Chair for Graduate Studies
Director, Children's Heart Research and Outcomes (HeRO) Center
Phone
404-727-9858
Office
Emory HSRB W486
Additional Research
"Cardiac Regeneration, stem cell therapy: Our laboratory focuses on various aspects of cardiac regeneration and preservation using molecular-based and biomaterials-based approaches to restoring function after cardiac injury."
IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Faculty
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Rafael Davalos

Rafael Davalos
rafael.davalos@bme.gatech.edu

Dr. Rafael Davalos' research interests are in microfluidics for personalized medicine and developing technologies for cancer therapy. He is most recognized for co-inventing Irreversible Electroporation (IRE), a minimally invasive non-thermal surgical technique to treat unresectable tumors near critical structures such as major blood vessels and nerves. The technology has been used to help thousands of patients worldwide with a second-generation version in clinical trials. Davalos has authored 150 peer-reviewed articles and has 47 issued patents (72 h-index, >18,000 citations) and has secured over $37M in research funding with $10M his share. His patents have been licensed to 7 companies. He has been a plenary speaker for several prestigious venues including the International Symposium of the Bioelectrochemistry Society, the World Congress on Electroporation, and the Society of Cryobiology Annual Meeting. 

Margaret P. and John H. Weitnauer Jr. Chaired Professor, ASME, BMES, NAI & AIMBE Fellow
Office
U.A. Whitaker Building, 313 Ferst Drive, Suite 2101
IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Faculty
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Lakshmi Dasi

Lakshmi Dasi
lakshmi.dasi@gatech.edu

Lakshmi Prasad Dasi is an established researcher in the field of prosthetic heart valves, cardiovascular biomechanics, biomaterials, and devices. He is currently a tenure Professor of Biomedical Engineering, at Georgia Institute of Technology while holding the Rozelle Vanda Wesley Endowed Professorship as well as being the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies. He has held positions at The Ohio State University, and Colorado State University previously. He is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC) as well as Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (FAIMBE). 

Dasi earned his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004 with a focus in fluid dynamics and turbulence. He trained as a postdoctoral fellow and research engineer under Prof. Ajit Yoganathan’s mentorship at Georgia Tech where he transformed his research focus to heart valves, devices, and cardiovascular biomechanics. In 2009, he established the Cardiovascular Biofluid Mechanics Lab (CBFL) as Assistant Professor at Colorado State University and moved to The Ohio State University in 2015 as his focus became more translational. Since 2020, his research at Georgia Tech focuses on tackling the complexity of: (a) heart valve biomechanics (native and prosthetic); (b) prosthetic heart valve engineering (conventional & trans-catheter); (c) structure-function relationships of the heart in health and disease at the embryonic, pediatric, as well as adult stages; and (d) turbulence and turbulent blood flow.

Rozelle Vanda Wesley Professor
Phone
404.385.1265
Office
TEP 237
IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Faculty
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

James Dahlman

James Dahlman
james.dahlman@bme.gatech.edu

James Dahlman is a bioengineer / molecular engineer whose work lies at the interface of chemistry, nanotechnology, genomics, and gene editing. His lab focuses on targeted drug delivery, in vivo gene editing, Cas9 therapies, siRNA therapies, and developing new technologies to improve biomaterial design. 

The DahlmanLab is known for applying 'big data' technologies to nanomedicine. The lab is pioneering DNA barcoded nanoparticles; using DNA barcodes, >200 nanoparticles can be analyzed simultaneously in vivo. These nanoparticles are studied directly in vivo, and used to deliver targeted therapies like siRNA, mRNA, or Cas9. As a result of this work, James was named 1 of the 35 most innovative people under the age of 35 by MIT Technnology Review in 2018. James has won many national / international awards, and has published in Science, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Cell Biology, Cell, Science Translational Medicine, PNAS, JACS, ACS Nano, Nano Letters, and other journals. James has also designed nanoparticles that efficiently deliver RNAs to the lung and heart. These nanoparticles can deliver 5 siRNAs at once in vivo, and are under consideration for clinical development. As a result, the lab has an interest in immunology and vascular biology. 

James supports entirely new research students come up with independently. To this end, DahlmanLab students learn how to (i) generate new ideas, (ii) select the good ones, and (iii) efficiently test whether the good ideas will actually work. 

Dahlman Lab students learn how to design/characterize/administer nanoparticles, how to isolate different cell types in vivo, how to rationally design DNA to record information, Cas9 therapies, and deep sequencing. As a result, the lab is an interdisciplinary group with students that have backgrounds in medicinal chemistry, BME, bioinformatics, biochemistry, and other fields. The lab welcomes students with all types of scientific backgrounds. The lab firmly stands by students, independent of their personal beliefs, preferences, or backgrounds.

Associate Professor
Phone
404-385-5262
Office
UAW 2101
Additional Research
In the Dahlman Lab, we focus on the interface between nanotechology, molecular biology, and genomics. We design drug delivery vehicles that target RNA and other nucleic acids to cells in the body. We have delivered RNAs to endothelial cells, and have treated heart disease, cancer, inflammation, pulmonary hypertension, emphysema, and even vein graft disease. Because we can deliver RNAs to blood vessels at low doses, sometimes we decide to deliver multiple therapeutic RNAs to the same cell at once. These 'multigene therapies' have been used to treat heart disease and cancer. Why is this important? Most diseases are caused by combinations of genes, not a single gene. We also rationally design the nucleic acids we want to deliver. For example, we re-engineered the Cas9 sgRNA to turn on genes, instead of turning them off. This enabled us to easily turn on gene A and turn off gene B in the same cell.
IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Faculty
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Hee Cheol Cho

Hee Cheol Cho
HeeCheol.Cho@emory.edu

Hee Cheol Cho is the Urowsky-Sahr Scholar in Pediatric Bioengineering and Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Pediatrics. He received his PhD in Physiology from the University of Toronto in 2003.

Associate Professor
Urowsky-Sahr Scholar in Pediatric Bioengineering
Phone
404-727-6356
Office
Emory HSRB E184
Additional Research
The Heart Regeneration Lab focuses on using genes and chemicals to pace and regenerate the heart. We are based at Emory University in Pediatrics and BME in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering of Georgia Tech and Emory University.
IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Faculty
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Leslie Chan

Leslie Chan
leslie.chan@gatech.edu

Dr. Leslie Chan is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Tech School of Engineering and Emory School of Medicine. Her research program integrates core and emerging principles from drug delivery, biomaterials development, and chemical biology to engineer diagnostic and therapeutic solutions for infectious disease, microbiome dysbiosis, and inflammatory diseases. Dr. Chan earned her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington with Professor Suzie Pun. She completed her postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Professor Sangeeta Bhatia. Dr. Chan is the recipient of an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award.

Assistant Professor
Office
IBB 1314
Additional Research
Smart Materials, Infectious Disease, Microbiome, Inflammation
IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Faculty
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Rose Brito

Rose Brito
Assistant to the Executive Director
Office
Petit Biotechnology Building, Office 1104
IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Staff
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Edward Botchwey

Edward Botchwey
edward.botchwey@bme.gatech.edu

Edward Botchwey received a B.S. in mathematics from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1993 and both M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in materials science engineering and bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 and 2002 respectively. He was recruited to the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2012 from his previous position at the University of Virginia. His current position is associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. Botchwey is former Ph.D. fellow of the National GEM Consortium, a former postdoctoral fellow of the UNCF-Merk Science Initiative, and a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers from the National Institutes of Health. 

Botchwey’s research focuses on the delivery of naturally occurring small molecules and synthetic derivatives for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. He is particularly interested in how transient control of immune response using bioactive lipids can be exploited to control trafficking of stem cells, enhance tissue vascularization, and resolve inflammation. Botchwey serves on the Board of Directors of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and serves as the secretary to the Biomedical Engineering Decade committee.

Botchwey, his wife Nisha Botchwey (also a GT faculty member) and three children reside in east Atlanta in the Lake Claire neighborhood. Botchwey is also an avid cyclist and enjoys reading YA fantasy, behavioral neuroscience and Christian theology books in his personal time.

Professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Phone
404.385.5058
Additional Research

Biomaterials, cellular materials, in situ characterization, tissue engineering, tissue engineering and biomaterials, microvascular growth and remodeling, stem cell engineering.

IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Faculty
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Mark Borodovsky

Mark Borodovsky
borodovsky@gatech.edu

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.

Regents' Professor
Director, Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics
Senior Advisor in Bioinformatics, Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta
Phone
404-894-8432
Office
EBB 2105
Additional Research

Development and applicaton of new machine learning and pattern recognition methods in bioinformatics and biological systems. Development and applicaton of new machine learning and pattern recognition methods in bioinformatics and biological systems. Chromatin; Epigenetics; Bioinformatics

IRI and Role
Bioengineering and Bioscience > Faculty
Data Engineering and Science > Affiliated Faculty
Data Engineering and Science
Bioengineering and Bioscience
University, College, and School/Department
Georgia Institute of Technology > College of Engineering > Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering