Dr. Hanjoong Jo is John and Jan Portman Professor in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and Professor of Medicine at Emory University. He is also the Associate Chair of Emory in BME Department. Upon graduation from Korea University, Dr. Jo received PhD under the co-mentorship of Professors John Tarbell (Chemical Engineering) and Ted Hollis (Physiology) at Pennsylvania State University in 1989. Following postdoctoral training in Jay McDonald Lab at Washington University in St. Louis and University of Alabama at Birmingham, he became Assistant Professor in Pathology and BME. Dr. Jo joined the BME Department at Georgia Tech and Emory University in 2000. He directs the Cardiovascular Mechanobiology and Nanomedicine lab. His lab studies how mechanical force associated with blood flow regulates vascular biology and cardiovascular disease, especially atherosclerosis, aortic valve (AV) calcification, and abdominal aortic aneurysms. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and edited two books. He developed the mouse model of atherosclerosis, known as partial carotid ligation model, induced by disturbed flow. His work led to the discovery of several genes (mechanosensitive genes and microRNAs) and epigenetic controlling mechanisms that are regulated by bad blood flow and play key roles in atherosclerosis and AAA. By targeting some of these mechanosensitive genes, his lab has been able to treat atherosclerosis and AAA in mice. His lab is now working on nanotechnologies to developing targeted gene and drug therapies in an effort to translate mouse studies toward clinical application. He is an elected fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Society, American Heart Association and American Physiological Society. He serves as associate editors and editorial board members of several cardiovascular and biomedical engineering journals including Scientific Reports, Circulation Research, Atherosclerosis Thrombosis Vascular Biology, Am J Physiology, Cell Molecular Bioengineering and Cardiovascular Engineering and Technology. He also has been serving as reviewers and chairs of study sections of the NIH, NSF, Veterans Administration and Am Heart Association. He also organized several international meetings, and in 2012, he served as the Chair of the Annual BME Society Meeting. He is also the founding President of Korean-American BME Society and Chairs of US-Korea Annual BMES Workshops since 2013. He has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ewha Womans University and Chonbuk National University.

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.

Dr. Gabe Kwong 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. 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.

Michelle C. LaPlaca, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint department between Georgia Tech and Emory University. Dr. LaPlaca earned her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, in 1991 and her M.S.E. (1992) and Ph.D. (1996) in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, in the area of neuronal injury biomechanics. Following post-doctoral training in Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania’s Head Injury Center from 1996-98, she joined the faculty at Georgia Tech. Dr. LaPlaca’s research interests are in neurotrauma, specifically: traumatic brain injury, injury biomechanics, cell culture modeling of traumatic injury, neural tissue engineering, and cognitive impairment associated with brain injury and aging. Her research is funded by NIH, NSF, and the Coulter Foundation.

Dr. Keilholz has been working in preclinical imaging for more than twenty years, with the goal of using animal models to improve the analysis of human MRI imaging. Her research uses multimodal approaches to extract information about neural dynamics from functional neuroimaging studies.

Felipe trained as a biomedical engineer in his native Colombia before obtaining a PhD from the Biomedical Engineering department of Duke University. At Duke, working in the laboratory of Ashutosh Chilkoti, he focused on the engineering of genetically-encoded, self-assembling protein polymers. An important outcome of this PhD work was the elucidation of sequence rules to program the phase separation behavior of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). Motivated by a newly acquired ability to engineer the phase behavior of IDPs, for his postdoctoral work he turned to their poorly-understood biology. To pursue skin as an outstanding biological system, Felipe joined the group of Elaine Fuchs at Rockefeller University. Felipe’s postdoctoral research led to the discovery that liquid-liquid phase separation drives the process of skin barrier formation. In 2020, he established the Quiroz Lab in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, where he is currently an Assistant Professor. Felipe is the recipient of multiple research awards, including a Career Award at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Melissa Lambeth Kemp received her B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from University of Washington. Dr. Kemp joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2006 after completing postdoctoral training at MIT. Her expertise is in computational modeling of metabolism and signal transduction, as well as developing statistical modeling tools to examine network relationships in high-dimension datasets. One major aspect of her research program linking ROS – the byproducts of aerobic metabolism – to the fundamental way that cells interpret instructions from their environment, their neighbors, and their own genetic blueprint. Specific applications of her diverse work include systems modeling of transient phosphatase oxidation of kinase cascades, patient-specific differences in cytotoxicity to redox-cycled chemotherapeutics and radiation, and the coordination of oxidative metabolism with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. Her research program also includes a component of developing high-throughput screening methods for assaying cue-signal-response relationships in cells and analytical tools for single cell gene expression. 

Dr. Kemp currently serves as the Research Director of the multi-site NSF Engineering Research Center “Cell Manufacturing Technologies”. In her former role as Associate Director of the NSF Science and Technology Center “Emergent Behavior of Integrated Cellular Systems”, she spearheaded the multi-site center’s computational activities by developing agent-based models of context-dependent cellular decisions to generate new hypotheses of intercellular communication in pluripotent stem cell differentiation and emergent patterning; this work continues currently in quantifying organizational principles and spatial relationships in iPSC-derived tissues from multi-omics data. Dr. Kemp’s career honors include a Whitaker Graduate Fellowship, Merck/CSBi postdoctoral fellowship, Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar, NIH New Innovator Award, and the CSB2 Prize for Innovative Measurement Methods from the Council for Systems Biology in Boston.

Dr. Francisco Robles is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the School of ECE and an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. He runs the Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy (OIS) Lab which focuses on advancing optical technologies to help improve the understanding of biological processes and the ability to identify and stage disease. The team develops and applies novel label-free linear and nonlinear spectroscopic methods, along with advanced signal processing methods, to gain access to novel forms of functional and molecular contrast for a variety of applications, including cancer detection, tumor margin assessment, and hematology. 

Dr. Robles completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Chemistry at Duke University (2016), earned his Ph.D. in Medical Physics at Duke University (2011), and earned a B.S. in Physics and in Nuclear Engineering from North Carolina State University (2007).

Dr. Lindsey previously developed matrix array transducers, adaptive beamforming strategies, and interventional devices in Stephen Smith’s lab at Duke University, where he received a Ph.D. for his work in 3D transcranial ultrasound.  While at Duke, he was the recipient of a pre-doctoral fellowship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of the Duke Medical Imaging Training Program.  He also completed postdoctoral training in the labs of Paul Dayton and Xiaoning Jiang at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University in contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging and in the design and fabrication of high frequency, interventional ultrasound transducers.  During this time, he was awarded the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the NIH to develop endoscopic transducers for contrast-specific imaging in pancreatic cancer.  Dr. Lindsey recently joined the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech-Emory, where he leads the Ultrasonic Imaging and Instrumentation Laboratory.  Dr. Lindsey is an active member of the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Society, the Biomedical Engineering Society and the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine and is a member of the Technical Program Committee for the IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium.  In 2022, Dr. Lindsey received the New Investigator award from the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine. At Georgia Tech, Dr. Lindsey holds a primary appointment in Biomedical Engineering.  He is also a faculty member for the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Graduate Program and holds an adjunct appointment in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Lab members have received best paper, best poster, and best student pitch awards from the IEEE UFFC Society. Research activities in the lab are currently funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.