Rudolph (Rudy) L. Gleason began at Tech in Fall 2005 as an assistant professor. Prior, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Texas A&M University. He is currently a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering. Gleason’s research program has two key and distinct research aims. The first research aim is to quantify the link between biomechanics, mechanobiology, and tissue growth and remodeling in diseases of the vasculature and other soft tissues. The second research aim is to translate engineering innovation to combat global health disparities and foster sustainable development in low-resource settings around the world. Gleason serves as a Georgia Tech Institute for People and Technology initiative lead for research activities related to global health equity and wellbeing.

Our interests lie in the adhesion and signaling molecules of the immune system as well as those involved in platelet adhesion and aggregation. We are primarily focused on early cell surface interaction kinetics and their primary signaling responses, as these are critical in determining how a cell will ultimately respond upon contact with another cell. The majority of our work ranges from single molecule interaction studies using atomic force microscopy, molecular dynamics simulations, or biomembrane force probe assays to single cell studies using micropipette adhesions assays, fluorescence imaging techniques, or real-time confocal microscopy. These assays focus on the mechanics and kinetics of receptor-ligand binding and their downstream signaling effects within cells. T cell receptors, selectins, integrins, and their respective ligands are some of the cell surface molecules currently under investigation in our lab. Understanding the initial interaction between molecules such as these and their subsequent early signaling processes is crucial to elucidating the response mechanisms of these physiological systems. Ultimately, our research strives to help better understand the mechanisms within these systems for possible medical applications in autoimmunity, allergy, transplant rejection, and thrombotic disorders. 

W. Hong Yeo is a TEDx alumnus and biomechanical engineer. Since 2017, Yeo is an assistant professor of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Program Faculty in Bioengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Before joining Georgia Tech, he has worked at Virginia Commonwealth University Medicine and Engineering as an assistant professor from 2014-2016. Yeo received his BS in mechanical engineering from INHA University, South Korea in 2003 and he received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and genome sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle in 2011. From 2011-2013, he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Beckman Institute and Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the fundamental and applied aspects of nanomechanics, biomolecular interactions, soft materials, and nano-microfabrication for nanoparticle biosensing and unusual electronic system development, with an emphasis on bio-interfaced translational nanoengineering. is an Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) and Scientific Pages of Bioengineering, and Review Editor of Frontiers of Materials (Frontiers Publishing Group). He serves as a technical committee member for IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference and Korea Technology Advisory Group at Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology. He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed journal articles, and has three issued and more than five pending patents. His research has been funded by MEDARVA Foundation, Thomas F. and Kate Miller Jeffress Memorial Trust, CooperVision, Inc., Korea Institute of Materials Science, Commonwealth Research Commercialization, and State Council of Virginia. Yeo is a recipient of a number of awards, including BMES Innovation and Career Development Award, Virginia Commercialization Award, Blavatnik Award Nominee, NSF Summer Institute Fellowship, Notable Korean Scientist Awards, and Best Paper/Poster Awards at ASME conferences.

Xia is the Brock Family Chair and Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, with joint appointments in School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Professor Xia received his Ph.D. degree in Physical Chemistry from Harvard University (with Professor George M. Whitesides) in 1996, his M.S. degree in Inorganic Chemistry from University of Pennsylvania (with the late Professor Alan G. MacDiarmid, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2000) in 1993, and his B.S. degree in Chemical Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1987. He came to the United States of America in 1991. Xia has received a number of prestigious awards, including the 2013 Nano Today Award, the ACS National Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2013), Fred Kavli Distinguished Lecture in Nanoscience at the MRS Spring Meeting (2013), AIMBE Fellow (2011), MRS Fellow (2009 ), NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2006), ACS Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award (2005), Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar (2002), David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2000), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2000), NSF Early Career Development Award (2000), ACS Victor K. LaMer Award (1999), and Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award (1997). Xia has been an Associate Editor of Nano Letters since 2002, and has served on the Advisory Boards of Particle & Particle Systems Characterization (2013-), Chemical Physics Letters (2013-), Chemistry: A European Journal (2013-), Chinese Journal of Chemistry (2013-), Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2011-), Advanced Healthcare Materials (2011-, inaugural chairman of the advisory board), Accounts of Chemical Research (2010-), Cancer Nanotechnology (2010-), Chemistry: An Asian Journal (2010-), Journal of Biomedical Optics (2010-), Nano Research (2009-), Science of Advanced Materials (2009-), Nano Today (2006-), Chemistry of Materials (2005-2007), Langmuir (2005-2010, 2013-2015), International Journal of Nanotechnology (2004-), and Advanced Functional Materials (2001-). He has also served as a Guest Editor of special issues for Advanced Materials (six times), Advanced Functional Materials (one time), MRS Bulletin (one time), and Accounts of Chemical Research (one time).

Vladimir V. Tsukruk is a Dean’s Distinguished Professor of Engineering at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, a founding Director of Microanalysis Center, and founding co-director of DoD BIONIC Center of Excellence.  He received MS degree in physics from the National University of Ukraine, PhD in polymer science and DSc in chemistry from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He carried out his post-doc research at the U. Marburg, Darmstadt TU, and U. Akron.

He serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of ten professional journals and as an Associate Editor at ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. He has co-authored more than 400 refereed articles in archival journals and five books, which have been cited more than 15,500 times with H-index of 60 (WoS).  He has organized ten professional symposia and trained about 70 students currently employed in industry, academia, and national labs.  His research in the field of surfaces, interfaces, directed assembly of synthetic/natural polymers and nanostructures, and bioinspired hybrid nanomaterials has been recognized by The Georgia Tech Outstanding Research Author Award (2015), the Humboldt Lectureship (2011), Humboldt Research Award (2010) and the National Science Foundation Special Creativity Award (2006) among others.

Todd Sulchek is an associate professor in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech where he conducts fundamental and applied research in the field of biophysics. His research program focuses on the mechanical and adhesive properties of cell and biological systems and the development of microsystems to aid in their study. His research employs tools, including, MEMS, microfluidics, imaging, and patterning to understand or enable biological systems. His interests include cancer diagnostics, stem cell biomanufacturing, novel therapeutics, and ultracheap engineering tools. He is a member of the interdisciplinary Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. Dr. Sulchek also holds program faculty positions in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering and has a courtesy appointment in the School of Biology. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford in Applied Physics under Calvin Quate and received a bachelors in math and physics from Johns Hopkins. He was a postdoc and staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He joined Georgia Tech in 2008 as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, the Lockheed Inspirational Young Faculty award, and the 2012 Petit Institute Above and Beyond Award. To date he has published 42 journal papers and has filed or been issued 7 patents. Prof. Sulchek is a strong supporter of undergraduate research, and he participates in a variety of undergraduate education activities including the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and includes over 8 undergraduate authors in the past year.

Paul S. Russo is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering with a joint appointment in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology with expertise in polymer, biopolymer and particle chemistry.

His research interests are rooted in rodlike polymers, such as plant viruses, cellulose derivatives and aromatic backbone materials. Particular emphasis has been paid to molecular transport in complex fluids containing rods and to related measurement methods. Static and dynamic laser light scattering have been joined by fluorescence photobleaching recovery and pulsed field gradient NMR spectroscopy to measure diffusion in dilute and concentrated solutions, gels, and liquid crystals. Dialysis implementations of these techniques have permitted stability studies of the amyloid protein responsible for Alzheimer’s disease. Other materials of interest include organophilic polypeptides, which have been coupled to silica cores to yield hybrid particles that can carry hydrophobic payloads, such as enzymes. The same particles can also form colloidal crystals and linear arrays. Small-angle x-ray scattering plays a role in the characterization of these materials. Hydrophobic proteins are being used to template the synthesis of polymers in new and unusual shapes and to disperse oil following marine spills.

H. Jerry Qi is a professor and the Woodruff Faculty Fellow in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor degrees (dual degree), master and Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) and a ScD degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston, MA, USA). After one year postdoc at MIT, he joined University of Colorado Boulder as an assistant professor in 2004, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2010. He joined Georgia Tech in 2014 as an associate professor with tenure and was promoted to a full professor in 2016. Qi is a recipient of NSF CAREER award (2007). He is a member of Board of Directors for the Society of Engineering Science. In 2015, he was elected to an ASME Fellow. The research in Qi's group is in the general area of soft active materials, with a focus on 1) 3D printing of soft active materials to enable 4D printing methods; and 2) recycling of thermosetting polymers. The material systems include: shape memory polymers, light activated polymers, vitrimers. On 3D printing, they developed a wide spectrum of 3D printing capability, including: multIMaTerial inkjet 3D printing, digit light process (DLP) 3D printing, direct ink write (DIW) 3D printing, and fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing. These printers allow his group to develop new 3D printing materials to meet the different challenging requirements. For thermosetting polymer recycling, his group developed methods that allow 100% recycling carbon fiber reinforced composites and electronic packaging materials. Although his group develops different novel applications, his work also relies on the understanding and modeling of material structure and properties under environmental stimuli, such as temperature, light, etc, and during material processing, such as 3D printing. Constitutive model developments are typically based on the observations from experiments and are then integrated with finite element through user material subroutines so that these models can be used to solve complicated 3D multiphysics problems involving nonlinear mechanics. A notable example is their recent pioneer work on 4D printing, where soft active materials is integrated with 3D printing to enable shape change (or time in shape forming process). Recently, his developed a state-of-the-art hybrid 3D printing station, which allows his group to integrate different polymers and conduct inks into one system. Currently, his group is working on using this printing station for a variety of applications, including printed 3D electronics, printed soft robots, etc.

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