Dr. Pardue is a Research Career Scientist at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, and a Professor in Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Pardue received her B.S. in zoology from the University of Wyoming and her doctorate in vision science and biology at the University of Waterloo. Her post-doctorate training in visual electrophysiology was completed with Dr. Neal Peachey at Loyola School of Medicine and Hines VA Hospital in Chicago and focused on biocompatibility of retinal prosthetics. Dr. Pardue moved to Atlanta in 2000 to join the Atlanta VA Medical Center and Emory University Department of Ophthalmology. She moved her academic appointment to Biomedical Engineering in 2015. Her research interests are focused on developing treatments for people with vision loss. To this end, she has developed three research themes within her lab: 1) neuroprotective and restorative treatments for retinal degeneration, 2) early detection and treatment of diabetic retinopathy, and 3) retinal mechanisms of refractive development and myopia. Her research has been continuously supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs, NIH, and private companies (1999-present). She has served on several VA and NIH grant review panels and frequently reviews manuscripts for several journals including Journal of Neuroscience, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Molecular Vision, Vision Research, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, Journal of Neurochemistry and PlosOne.

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.

Ahmet Coskun is a Bernie-Marcus Early-Career Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. Coskun is a systems biotechnologist and bioengineer, working at the nexus of multiplexed cell imaging and quantitative tissue biology. He directs an interdisciplinary research team at the Single Cell Biotechnology and Spatial Omics Laboratory, an interdisciplinary program strategically positioned for multiparameter imaging one cell at a time by spatial context and function. Coskun holds five issued patents and is also the co-author of more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in major scientific journals. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award 2024, NIH R35 MIRA Award 2023, Sigma Xi Young Faculty Award 2025, CMBE Young Innovator Award 2024, BMES-CMBE Rising Star Award 2023, American Lung Association Innovation Award 2022, Burroughs Welcome Fund CASI Award 2016, and Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: Class of 1934 CIOS Award, among other research and teaching awards. Previously, Coskun was an instructor at Stanford University. He received his postdoctoral training from the California Institute of Technology. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research has been supported by federal and private grants, including the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS, NIA, NIAID, NCI, NIDCR, OD, and ORIP), Wellcome LEAP, Burroughs Wellcome Fund (CASI), NSF CMaT, American Cancer Society IRG, Multi-cellular engineered living systems (M-CELS), and Regenerative Medicine Center. In addition, he leads outreach programs to engage K-12 students and undergraduate students through BioCrowd Studio, an innovative crowd-sourcing program bringing together interactive virtual media, distributed biokits, and collaborative spatial discovery.

Faces of Research - Profile Article

Prof. Ethier was originally trained as a mechanical engineer, receiving his Ph.D. from MIT in 1986 working in the lab of Roger D. Kamm. He then joined the University of Toronto, where he was a Professor of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering and Ophthalmology, and latterly the Director of the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering. Prior to joining Georgia Tech/Emory, Professor Ethier was the Head of the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College, London from 2007-12. 

His research is in the biomechanics of cells and whole organs. His specific research topics include glaucoma (biomechanics of aqueous humour drainage in the normal and glaucomatous eye, and the mechanical and cellular response of optic nerve tissues to intraocular pressure), study of hemodynamic basis of arterial disease.

Dr. Alexandra Peister is an associate professor in the Biology Department at Morehouse College.

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.

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.

Anant Paravastu holds bachelors (MIT, 1998) and Ph.D. degrees (UC Berkeley, 2004) in chemical engineering. His Ph.D. research with Jeffrey Reimer focused on the use of lasers to control nuclear spin polarizations in the semiconductor GaAs. From 2004 to 2007, he worked as a postdoc at the Laboratory of Chemical Physics at NIH with Robert Tycko, where he learned to apply nuclear magnetic resonance to structural biology. Paravastu’s early structural biology work focused amyloid fibrils of the Alzheimer’s β-amyloid peptide. He was part of the team and community that showed that amyloid fibril formation is a complex phenomenon, with individual peptides exhibiting multiple aggregation pathways capable of producing multiple distinct aggregated structures. Between 2008 and 2015, Paravastu worked as an assistant professor at Florida State University and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Paravastu started his present position at Georgia Tech in 2015. Paravastu’s laboratory presently focuses on 3 general lines of inquiry: 1) structural analysis of peptides that were rationally designed to assemble into nanostructured materials, 2) nonfibrillar aggregates of the Alzheimer’s β-amyloid peptide, and 3) aggregation due to misfolding of proteins driven away from their natural folds.