Joel Voldman, PH.D.
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
voldman@mit.edu | RLE Biography | RLE Video

Joel Voldman, Ph. D., is an Assoociate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA. Prof. Voldman received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1995. He received the Masters degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, in 1997 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 2001. Following this, he performed postdoctoral training in George Church's lab at Harvard Medical School. He has been on the MIT faculty since July 2002. In 2004, he was awarded the NBX Career Development Chair, and in 2006 he was promoted to associate professor.

Chad Collins
Administrative Assistant
chadcoll@mit.edu

Mr. Collins joined RLE in the fall of 2001 as the administrative assistant for Prof. Jacob White and the Computational Prototyping Group. He began working for the Biological Microtechnology and BioMEMS Group in 2006. 

Aalap Dighe  (MechE)

dighe@mit.edu

Aalap is a Ph.D. candidate in the Mechanical Engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his B.S. from Purdue University in 2009 and S.M. from MIT in 2011, both in Mechanical Engineering. His undergraduate research work consisted of examining thermionic emission from carbon nanotube tips for applications in energy conversion. For his Masters project, Aalap designed, fabricated and characterized a new type of MEMS valve for leak-free chip-scale vacuum pumping applications. He joined the Biological Microtechnology and BioMEMS group in 2011, where he is currently working on designing a closed-loop neural interface MEMS device. In his spare time, Aalap enjoys cooking, sailing, rowing, running by the Charles, going to Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts and all kinds of art, particularly black & white photography and impressionist paintings.

Burak Dura (EECS)

dura@mit.edu

Burak received his B.S. degree from Middle East Technical University, Turkey in 2009, and his M.S. degree from Stanford University in 2011, both in electrical engineering. Before joining RLE, he has worked on signal improvement methods in microfluidic cytometers and high frequency electrical stimulation techniques for cardiac cell cultures. His research interests include microfluidics, biomems , in vitro diagnostics and modeling. His current research focuses on development of point of care diagnostic systems and high-throughput microfluidic systems for biological studies.

Sarvesh Varma (MechE)

sarvesh@mit.edu

Sarvesh received his B.A.Sc degree in Nanotechnology Engineering (Honors) from the University of Waterloo, Canada. He subsequently joined the Biological Microtechnology and BioMEMS group in the summer of 2010 as a SM student from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is currently exploring methods to apply cellular engineering towards studying the impact of microtechnologies and lab-on-a-chip processes on cell health and physiology. In his spare time, he enjoys various escapades involving travelling, photography, and engaging percussive music.

Hao-wei Su (EECS)

haowei@mit.edu

Hao-Wei Su received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University in 2009 and began his S.M./Ph.D program in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT in 2011. Sponsored by National Taiwan University, he exchanged to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2008 fall. His research interest includes bioelectronics and biomedical imaging, and biological microtechnology. His current research focuses on mammalian cell sorting and electrical profiling. Outside laboratory, he enjoys playing volleyball, skiing, and hanging out with friends.

postdoctoral Researchers

Marc Castellarnau

mcastell@mit.edu

Marc received his B.A. in Physics, B.S. in Electronic Engineering and Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Barcelona, in 1999, 2003 and 2008 respectively. Before joining RLE in March 2011, he worked in a Research and Engineering Center (CRIC), participating in several EU-funded projects related with the use of biosensors for food quality/safety control. He also spent a year as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), where his research was focused in the development of microdevices for sample preparation, combining microfluidics and dielectrophoresis, and the integration of fully autonomous systems for POC applications. His actual research interests include the use of microfluidic approaches for high-throughput cell biology studies at a single cell level. During his free time, he enjoys spending time with friends, swimming, photography, listening good music and traveling.

Anna Fendyur

fendyur@mit.edu

Anna received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) in 2009. Before joining the group on June 2012, Anna worked on development of multielectrode array based bio-electronic hybrid system to study excitable cells. Her actual research interests focus on development of cell-based sensors for evaluation of impacts of various cells-manipulating technologies on cell physiology. In addition to her Ph.D., Anna also holds B.Sc.Pharm, M.Sc. and MBA degrees from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Apart from science, Anna enjoys traveling, scuba diving, going to museums and theatres and spending time with her family and friends.

Thibault Honegger

thonegge@mit.edu

Thibault received an engineer diploma from the Ecole Centrale in Nantes (France) in 2007. He trained in microfluidics by designing a nanochannel electroosmotic pump at Micronit Microfluidics (The Netherlands). He then specialized in NanoBioTechnologies by receiving a MS in Biologie from the Université Joesph Fourrier (Grenoble, France) in 2008. He received a Ph.D. in Microelectronics and Microtechnologies from the Université de Grenoble (France) in 2011 after 3 years at the CNRS-LTM lab. Before joining the group in January 2012, Thibault focused on developping novel electro-microfluidics devices to perform 3D contactless micrometric colloidal particles handling. He has also developped some microfabrication methods to create smart colloidal particles, such as Janus particles, that can be used as vectors to locally interact with cells. His actual research interests focus on sub-cellular dielectrophoresis on neuronal cells. During his free time, Thibault enjoys spending time with friends, cooking and drinking good wine.

Javier L. Prieto

jlprieto@mit.edu

Javier received his B.S. and M.S. in Telecommunications Engineering at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona and M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Before joining the group on October 2011, he worked in the Spanish industry as a QA software engineer and in 2005 cofounded EIMODE a small consulting company. His academic research started at the Robotics Laboratory at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCI. In July 2006, he was awarded a Balsells Fellowship to conduct graduate studies at UCI where he joined the Biomolecular Microsystmes and Nano Transducers Lab (BioMiNT). While at BioMiNT he worked on the Revolutionizing Prosthetics Project from DARPA and developed multiple microfluidic platforms. The last two years at BioMiNT he worked on label-free stem cell sorting using dielectrophoretic tools. His current research interests include microfluidic platforms for whole blood processing and sepsis treatment. During his free time he enjoys cinema, biking, he’s interested on quantifying all aspects of life and hacking anything that can be opened.