Woon Ju Park

Woon Ju Park headshot
woonju@gatech.edu
Faculty Profile

Woon Ju Park is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Georgia Tech. She received her PhD in Brain and Cognitive Science from University of Rochester and completed her postdoctoral training from University of Washington. At Georgia Tech, she leads the Cortical Resilience Lab where she studies visual and auditory processing, brain plasticity, and perception in typical and atypical populations. Her work combines behavioral experiments, computational modeling, and multimodal neuroimaging (structural, functional, diffusion, and quantitative MRI) to understand how the human brain adapts to changes in sensory input, particularly in individuals with different sensory experiences (e.g., children with ASD, older adults, and those with early or late-onset visual impairments). Her research has been supported by prestigious awards such as the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award. Dr. Park is committed to interdisciplinary approaches and integrating insights from neuroscience, psychology, and engineering to advance both basic science and assistive technologies.  

Assistant Professor
Office
JS Coon, Room 225
University, College, and School/Department
Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5LuGpVgAAAAJ&hl=en
LinkedIn Cortical Resilience Lab

W. Hong Yeo

W. Hong Yeo's profile picture
woonhong.yeo@me.gatech.edu
ME Profile Page

Dr. Yeo holds the titles of G.P. "Bud" Peterson and Valerie H. Peterson Endowed Professor, as well as Harris Saunders Jr. Endowed Professor, in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is also the director of the Wearable Intelligent Systems and Healthcare Center (WISH Center) and the KIAT-Georgia Tech Semiconductor Electronics Center (K-GTSEC). Dr. Yeo's research focuses on understanding the fundamentals of soft materials, deformable mechanics, interfacial physics, manufacturing, and the integration of hard and soft materials for the development of biomedical systems. He earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and genome sciences from the University of Washington in Seattle and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With over 180 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Yeo has contributed to many prestigious journals, including Nature Materials, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Communications, and Science Advances. He is an IEEE Senior Member and has received numerous awards, including the Visiting Professorship from the Institute Jean Lamour at the Université de Lorraine in France, the Lucy G. Moses Lectureship Award at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the NIH Trailblazer Young Investigator Award, the IEEE Outstanding Engineer Award, the Emory School of Medicine Research Award, the Imlay Innovation Award, the American Heart Association Innovative Project Award, the Sensors Young Investigator Award, the Med-X Young Investigator Award, and the Outstanding Service Award from the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology, as well as the Outstanding Yonsei Scholar Award. Dr. Yeo is also the founder of two startup companies: Huxley Medical, Inc. and WisMedical, Inc.

Professor, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Faculty, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Director, WISH Center
Phone
404.894.9425
Office
Marcus Nano 4133
Additional Research

Human-machine interface; hybrid materials; bio-MEMS; Soft robotics. Flexible Electronics; Human-machine interface; hybrid materials; Electronic Systems, Devices, Components, & Packaging; bio-MEMS; Soft robotics. Yeo's research in the field of biomedical science and bioengineering focuses on the fundamental and applied aspects of biomolecular interactions, soft materials, and nano-microfabrication for the development of nano-biosensors and soft bioelectronics.

Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ryhsv18AAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
Bio-Interfaced Translational Nanoengineering Group Wearable Intelligent Systems and Healthcare Center (WISH Center)

Kyle Allison

Kyle Allison's profile picture
kyle.r.allison@emory.edu
Website

Kyle Allison is a bioengineer and chemical engineer whose research has focused on understanding the behavior of bacteria in order to improve antibiotics. The Allison Lab tracks individual bacteria using microscopy approaches they developed.  Kyle and his lab have made foundational discoveries in the metabolite potentiation of antibiotics, the resuscitation of persistent bacteria, and the multicellularity of E. coli (the best-studied unicellular organism).  Kyle was named to the first “30 under 30” list in Science by Forbes Magazine and received the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award to bypass traditional postdoctoral training. His research has been published in Nature, PNAS, Molecular Systems Biology, Nature Methods, Nature Chemical Biology, and other journals.  Kyle also holds a master’s degree in literature and wrote his thesis on James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine/Infectious Disease, Emory University
Phone
404-727-6974
Office
Emory HSRB E146
Additional Research

Antibiotics, Systems Biology, Multicellularity

Research Focus Areas
Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Gn-HTRUAAAAJ&hl=en
Related Site

Amirali Aghazadeh

Amirali Aghazadeh's profile picture
aaghazadeh3@gatech.edu
Profile Page

Amirali Aghazadeh is an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and also program faculty of Machine Learning, Bioinformatics, and Bioengineering Ph.D. programs. He has affiliations with the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEAS) and Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences. Before joining Georgia Tech, Aghazaeh was a postdoc at Stanford and UC Berkeley and completed his Ph.D. at Rice University. His research focuses on developing machine learning and deep learning solutions for protein and small molecular design and engineering.
 

Assistant Professor
Phone
713-257-5758
Office
CODA S1209
Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=87wBxzUAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

Vinayak Agarwal

Vinayak Agarwal's profile picture
vagarwal@gatech.edu
Website

Vinny is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech with joint appointments at the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Biological Sciences.

A majority of antibiotics and drugs that we use in the clinic are derived or inspired from small organic molecules called Natural Products that are produced by living organisms such as bacteria and plants. Natural Products are at the forefront of fighting the global epidemic of antibiotic resistant pathogens, and keeping the inventory of clinically applicable pharmaceuticals stocked up. Some Natural Products are also potent human toxins and pollutants, and we need to understand how these toxins are produced to minimize our and the environmental exposure to them.

We as biochemists ask some simple questions- how and why are Natural Products produced in Nature, what we can learn from Natural Product biosynthetic processes, and how we can exploit Nature's synthetic capabilities for interesting applications?

Broadly, we are interested in questions involving (meta)genomics, biochemistry, structural and mechanistic enzymology, mass spectrometry, analytical chemistry, and how natural product chemistry dictates biology.

Assistant Professor
Phone
404-385-3798
Office
Petit Biotechnology Building, Office 3315
Additional Research

A majority of antibiotics and drugs that we use in the clinic are derived or inspired from small organic molecules called Natural Products that are produced by living organisms such as bacteria and plants. Natural Products are at the forefront of fighting the global epidemic of antibiotic resistant pathogens, and keeping the inventory of clinically applicable pharmaceuticals stocked up. Some Natural Products are also potent human toxins and pollutants, and we need to understand how these toxins are produced to minimize our and the environmental exposure to them. We as biochemists ask some simple questions- how and why are Natural Products produced in Nature, what we can learn from Natural Product biosynthetic processes, and how we can exploit Nature's synthetic capabilities for interesting applications? Broadly, we are interested in questions involving (meta)genomics, biochemistry, structural and mechanistic enzymology, mass spectrometry, analytical chemistry, and how natural product chemistry dictates biology.

Related Site

Alexander T. Adams

Alexander Adams
aadams322@gatech.edu
https://www.uncommonsenselabs.com

Alex Adams’s research focuses on designing, fabricating, and implementing new ubiquitous and wearable sensing systems. In particular, he is interested in how to develop these systems using equity-driven design principles for healthcare. Alex leverages sensing, signal processing, and fabrication techniques to design, deploy, and evaluate novel sensing technologies.

Originally a musician, Alex became fascinated by how he could capture and manipulate sounds through analog hardware and digital signal processing, which led him back to his hometown (Concord, NC). Alex completed his BS at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2014 and his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2021 (advised by Professor Tanzeem Choudhury). Alex then became the resident Research Scientist for the Precision Behavioral Health Initiative at Cornell Tech (NYC) until the fall of 2022, when he joined the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Currently, his research focuses on the equity-driven design and the development of multi-modal sensing systems to simultaneously assess mental and physical health to enable a new class of mobile health technologies.

Assistant Professor
Office
237 TSRB
Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=assJWZYAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

Alex Abramson

Alex Abramson's profile picture
aabramson6@gatech.edu
Abramson Lab

Alex Abramson is an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research, which focuses on drug delivery and bioelectronic therapeutics, has been featured in news outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, and Wired. Abramson has received several recognitions for scientific innovation, including being named a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Science List and the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 List. He is passionate about translating scientific endeavors from bench to bedside. Large pharmaceutical companies have exclusively licensed a portfolio of his patents to bring into clinical trials, and Abramson serves as a scientific advisor overseeing their commercialization. In addition to his scientific endeavors, Abramson plays an active role in his community by leading diversity and inclusion efforts on campus and volunteering as a STEM tutor to local students.

Abramson received a B.S. in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow under the direction of Professors Robert Langer and Giovanni Traverso. He conducted postdoctoral work at Stanford University as an NIH fellow with Professors Zhenan Bao and the late Sanjiv S. Gambhir.

The Abramson Lab develops ingestible, implantable, and wearable robotic therapeutic devices that solve key healthcare problems and provide measurable therapeutic outcomes. Our translationally focused research spans a multitude of areas, including (1) drug delivery devices for optimal drug adherence, (2) soft materials for bioelectronic sensors and therapeutics, and (3) preclinical drug screening technologies.

Assistant Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Office
MoSE 4120B
Additional Research
  • Biosensors
Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9-E5owYAAAAJ
ChBE Profile Page

Joscelyn Mejias

Joscelyn Mejias's profile picture
joscelyn.mejias@bme.gatech.edu

Joscelyn Mejías is an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. She received a BS in bioengineering with the Distinction in Research and Creative Works and a BA in asian studies from Rice University; she earned her MS and Ph.D. from the joint Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. Mejías has been supported by a number of awards including the GT Presidents Fellowship and Goizueta Foundation Fellowship, NSF-GRFP, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundations Minority Ph.D. Fellowship. She has received the 2023 L’Oréal For Women in Science for her work in Uterine Fibroids and NIA MOSAIC K99 to study age and sex differences in the immune response to biomaterials. Her lab focuses on biomaterials, immune mediated tissue regeneration, and developing in vitro models of fibrosis (uterine fibroids).

Assistant Professor
Office
UAW 3121
Mejías Lab

J. Lucas Mckay

JM
jmckay2@emory.edu
https://jlucasmckay.bmi.emory.edu/

Dr. J. Lucas Mckay, PhD MSCR, is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Neurology at Emory University School of Medicine. He earned his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech and a Master’s in Clinical Research Methods. He co‑directs the Emory Brain Health Center Motion Analysis Lab and maintains one of the largest full‑body behavioral data repositories for movement disorders. His translational research focuses on balance, gait, falls, and freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease, bridging engineering, biostatistics, and clinical trials. He serves as a biostatistician on federally funded Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease trials and holds NIH career development awards, with a strong record of interdisciplinary collaboration and peer‑reviewed publications.

Associate Professor
Office
Emory Brain Health Center
Additional Research
  • Bioinformatics
  • Healthcare
  • Other

Craig Forest

Craig Forest's profile picture
cforest@gatech.edu
Website

Craig Forest is a Professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech where he also holds program faculty positions in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering. He conducts research on miniaturized, high-throughput robotic instrumentation to advance neuroscience and genetic science, working at the intersection of bioMEMS, precision machine design, optics, and microfabrication. Prior to Georgia Tech, he was a research fellow in Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He obtained a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in June 2007, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2003, and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2001. He is cofounder/organizer of one of the largest undergraduate invention competitions in the US—The InVenture Prize, and founder/organizer of one of the largest student-run makerspaces in the US—The Invention Studio. He was a recently a Fellow in residence at the Allen Insitutte for Brain Science in Seattle WA; he was awarded the Georgia Tech Institute for BioEngineering and BioSciences Junior Faculty Award (2010) and was named Engineer of the Year in Education for the state of Georgia (2013). He is one of the inaugural recipients of the NIH BRAIN Initiative Grants, a national effort to invent the next generation of neuroscience and neuroengineering tools. In 2007, he was a finalist on the ABC reality TV show "American Inventor.”

Professor
Phone
404.385.7645
Office
Petit Biotechnology Building, Office 1310
Additional Research
The Precision Biosystems Laboratory is focused on the creation and application of miniaturized, high-throughput, biological instrumentation to advance genetic science. The development of instruments that can nimbly load, manipulate, and measure many biological samples - not only simultaneously, but also more sensitively, more accurately, and more repeatably than under current approaches - opens the door to essential, comprehensive biological system studies. Our group strives to develop these tools, validate their performance with meaningful biological assays, and with our collaborators, pursue discoveries using the instruments. These instruments, and the discoveries they enable, could open new frontiers forthe design and control of biological systems.
Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=q8FA7IEAAAAJ&hl=en
LinkedIn Precision Biosystems Laboratory