Organizers
Bashar Hamza
Bashar Hamza is a Ph.D. candidate in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT. He is also a member of the Manalis Laboratory at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research where he is currently working on an optofluidic platform for studying metastasis by real-time monitoring of circulating tumor cell dynamics in genetically engineered mouse models. Prior to starting at MIT in 2014, Bashar worked at MGH’s BioMEMS Resource Center (BMRC) as a research engineer where he developed microfluidic platforms for collecting quantitative clinical measurements of immune and cancer cells at the single cell level. He also served as the manager of the cleanroom facility at MGH’s BMRC.
Max Stockslager is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Prior to MIT, he completed his B.S. in mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2015. Working with the Manalis laboratory as an NSF fellow, his primary research interests are in instrumentation and measurement, with a particular focus on building microfluidic tools to measure single-cell biophysical properties. In particular, his thesis research involves the development of microsensors for measuring single-cell mass at high throughput, and applying these devices to study ex vivo drug sensitivity in cancer.
Lara Meier is a Ph.D. candidate at the University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany and is currently a visiting student at MIT. Lara completed her B.S. degree in Biology from the University of Hamburg and her M.Sc. in Biomedical Sciences from the Philipps-University in Marburg working on miRNAs in Glioblastoma. During her M.Sc. studies, Lara was also an intern at the Biomedical Research Centre at UBC (Vancouver, Canada) before starting her doctoral studies in the Loges laboratory (Hamburg, Germany). Her doctoral dissertation project is in collaboration with the Manalis laboratory at MIT focusing on understanding the resistance mechanism to immune checkpoint therapy by utilizing novel bioMEMS tools deisgned for pre-clinical animal models of cancer.
FluidicMEMS Advisory Board
Vivian Hech
Vivian Hecht is currently a computational scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Vivian completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT, where she worked to develop microfluidic tools for investigating cellular behavior. She joined the BE department as an NSF fellow in 2010, after graduating with a B.S. in Bioengineering from UCLA. Her thesis research involved developing a microfluidic device to investigate the interactions between cells of the immune system, and applying precision measurement tools to evaluate biophysical properties of immune cells. In addition to her research, Vivian was active in the BE department, serving on the MIT BE Graduate Student Board, and the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee. She also interned at the Technology Licensing Office at MIT, where she works to commercialize technologies developed by MIT faculty and students. Vivian has been a part of the FluidicMEMS team since 2012.
Rob Kimmerling is the co-founder and director of R&D at Travera (LabCentral). He completed his Ph.D. in the department of Biological Engineering at MIT. Prior to MIT, he received his B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Stony Brook University in 2011. As an NSF fellow in the Manalis Laboratory, he is developing a microfluidic platform to collect single-cell transcriptional profiles downstream of long-term phenotypic measurements and lineage tracking with a particular focus on cancer cell growth regulation and immune cell differentiation. In addition to his research, Rob is serving as the Chair of the Gordon Research Seminar on Immunochemistry & Immunobiology to be held in 2016. Rob has been part of the FluidicMEMS team since 2012.
Steven Nagle is the director of engineering and production at Q-State. Prior to that, Steven was an Instructor in the Biological Engineering Department at MIT. His teaching and research activities primarily include the development of novel bioinstrumentation for research, as well as for standard and miniaturized medical devices. Prior to returning to MIT, Steven developed 35 AFM nanoprobe products over 3 years at Bruker AXS (then Veeco Metrology) and contributed an annualized $3 million to the bottom line.
Lily Kim is an independent consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on life sciences technology and commercialization strategy. She founded FluidicMEMS, a resource for the New England microfluidics innovation cluster that brings together academia and industry via an event series and a blog, and is now in its 6th year.Lily has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and an M.Eng. and S.B. in electrical engineering from MIT. Her technical background is in lab-on-a-chip and microfluidic systems — during her graduate studies Lily was awarded a Hertz Foundation fellowship and developed microfluidic devices for investigating embryonic stem cell biology. She wants to understand how we can accelerate and improve the success rate of early stage life sciences commercialization.