People > Joel Voldman > Biographical Background

Biographical Background

Professor Joel Voldman is a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1995. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from MIT in 1997 and 2001, respectively. Professor Voldman performed postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School before joining the MIT faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2002.

Professor Voldman's current research interests focus on BioMEMS, applying microfabrication technology to illuminate biological systems, especially at the cellular level. Specifically, he investigates technologies that enhance or enable the acquisition of information from cells. His research builds upon various disciplines: electrical engineering, microfabrication, bioengineering, surface science, fluid mechanics, and mass transport. His group takes a quantitative approach to designing technology, using both analytical and numerical modeling to gain fundamental understanding of the technologies that we create. He then takes designs through microfabrication to packaging and testing and to biological assay.