Albert Folch’s lab works at the interface between microfluidics and cancer. He received both his BSc (1989) and PhD (1994) in Physics from the University of Barcelona (UB), Spain, in 1989. During his Ph.D. he was a visiting scientist from 1990–91 at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab working on AFM/STM under Dr. Miquel Salmeron. From 1994–1996, he was a postdoc at MIT developing MEMS under Martin Schmidt (EECS) and Mark Wrighton (Chemistry). In 1997, he joined Mehmet Toner’s lab as a postdoc at Harvard-MGH to apply soft lithography to tissue engineering. He has been at Seattle’s UW BioE since June 2000, where he is now a full Professor, accumulating over 12,000 citations. In 22 years, he has supervised 19 postdocs (16% of whom have reached faculty rank), 36 graduate students (12 Ph.D. students, 25% of whom faculty rank, and 24 M.S. students), and ~43 undergraduates. In 2001 he received an NSF Career Award, and in 2014 he was elected to the AIMBE College of Fellows (Class of 2015). He served on the Advisory Board of Lab on a Chip 2010-2016 and serves on the Editorial Board of Micromachines since 2019. In 2022 he was elected a member of the Institute for Catalan Studies, one of the highest honors bestowed on Catalan scientists. He is the author of 5 books (sole author), including Introduction to BioMEMS (2012, Taylor&Francis), a textbook adopted by >103 departments in 18 countries, and Hidden in Plain Sight (MIT Press, 2022). Since 2007, the lab runs a celebrated outreach art program called BAIT (Bringing Art Into Technology), which has produced seven exhibits, a popular resource gallery of >2,000 free images related to microfluidics and microfabrication, and a YouTube channel that plays microfluidic videos with music which accumulate ~163,000 visits since 2009.

Amar Basu, Ph.D. is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a joint appointment in Biomedical Engineering at Wayne State University. He received the M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering (Circuits and Microsystems) and the M.S. degree in Biotechnology from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Upon graduation, he joined Wayne State University, where he is PI of the Microfluidics and Bioinstrumentation Lab, and director of the Wayne State Nanofabrication Facility. His overall research interests are in building translatable lab-on-a-chip and microelectronic systems for biotech and biomedicine. One trajectory of work is in multiphase microfluidic systems, including droplet-based digital assays, particle and cell sorting, novel sensing methods using interfacial phenomena, and computer vision applied to cytometry. Another trajectory includes wearable sensors for health monitoring, and portable systems for environmental monitoring. He is the lead PI for a grant that will acquire one of the first industry-scale 2 photon nanoscale 3d printing system to North America.

Amar has served as the track chair of Micro and Nanotechnologies at the Society of Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), track chair of microfluidics/emerging sensors in IEEE Sensors and IEEE Transducers. He currently serves on the editorial board of SLAS Technology Journal, and Frontiers in Lab on a Chip Technologies. From 2015-2016 He was a visiting research scientist at Intel Corporation and at the Aston Mass Spectrometry Lab under Prof. Graham Cooks. He was VP of Engineering and Digital Assays at Bioelectronica during entrepreneurial leave in 2017-2019 and continues to work with the company to develop Hypercell computer vision single cell sorting technology. The Hypercell platform won the SLAS best new product award in 2020, and the Innovation Showcase award from the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) in the same year. The TRACE wearable sensor, developed by his lab and being commercialized through TRACE Biometrics, won the poster pitch competition at the 2024 National Insitutes on Aging A2 symposium as the most promising new technology for healthy aging.

Dr. Bonnie L. Gray is a Professor in the School of Engineering Science (ENSC) at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Canada, a Fraser Health Authority affiliated researcher, and on the board of the Vancouver Medical Device Development Center (MDDC). Dr. Gray has over 140 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications, and has given more than 25 invited, keynote, and plenary presentations at international conferences, in the areas of novel materials and fabrication techniques for biomedical and microfluidic devices and systems; development of flexible and wearable microfluidic and biosensor technologies; point-of-care instruments; and chip-based biological cell sorting and trapping methods. Dr. Gray is a dedicated mentor and the 2014 recipient of the SFU Dean of Graduate Studies Award for Excellence in Supervision. Dr. Gray was the Chapter Chair for the Vancouver IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) from 2007-2017, and organizer of two mini-colloquia in 2012 and 2017. She is on the Editorial Board of the IOP Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering. She chaired the SPIE Conference on Microfluidics, BioMEMS, & Medical Microsystems from 2014-2024, and has been a member of the Program and/or Organizing Committees for various IEEE conferences, including the IEEE MEMS Conference, the IEEE Nanotechnology Materials and Devices Conference (NMDC), and IEEE NANO. She is also active in IEEE awards committees (IEEE NTC and IEEE EMBS); and EDI initiatives, including the IEEE Women in Electron Devices Committee (WiEDS) and a member of Women of Wearables (WoW).

Cory Lambertson has over 8 years of experience in additive manufacturing. With starting in the corporate world of additive manufacturing in 2015, Cory found a passion for the Asiga brand of 3D Printers due to the revolutionary changes that they bring to the additive world. Today, Cory is the General Manager of Americas at Asiga, and is based out of Ann Arbor Michigan.

Dr. Hayes received undergraduate, master’s and medical degrees from Indiana University, followed by a residency in internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School/Health Science Center/Parkland Memorial Hospital and a fellowship in medical oncology at Harvard’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). He has led the breast cancer programs at DFCI (1991-1996), Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center (1996-2001), and the University of Michigan from 2001-2016. Dr. Hayes’ research interests are in the field of experimental therapeutics and cancer biomarkers, especially in breast cancer. His work has been particularly focused on development and validation of cancer biomarker tests, such as HER-2, CA15-3, circulating tumor cells and pharmacogenomic markers. He has been instrumental in establishing international guidelines for the use of tumor biomarker tests, including criteria for their clinical utility. He has served as chair of the SWOG Breast Cancer Translational Medicine Committee, and he was an inaugural member and chaired the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Tumor Marker Guidelines Committee. He has been instrumental in the joint ad hoc committees between ASCO and the College of American Pathologists. Dr. Hayes served on the ASCO Board of Directors, and served a 3 year term as President of ASCO from 2016-2018. He is a Fellow of ASCO, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a past Komen Scholar, and a member of the Association of American Physicians and of the American Clinical and Climatologic Association. He has been the recipient of the ASCO Gianni Bonadonna Award in breast cancer and the Allen Lichter Visionary Leadership Award in 2021 as well as the Susan G. Komen Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction in Clinical Research in 2023, and has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Indiana University Medical School (2024).

David Juncker stayed as a visiting scientist at the National Metrology Institute of Japan in Tsukuba from 1997-98. He conducted his PhD research at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory from 1999-2002. He then pursued his studies as a Post-doc first at IBM Zurich until 2004, and then one year at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). David started as an assistant professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department of McGill University in 2005, was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2011, and became a full professor in 2016. As of early 2018, David serves as departmental chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department at McGill University.

Dr. Juncker's current interests are in the miniaturization and integration in biology and medicine, which includes the engineering and utilization of novel micro and nanotechnologies for manipulating, stimulating and studying oligonucleotides, proteins, cells, and tissues. The emerging field of nanobiotechnology, in a broad sense, is the most exciting to him, and is also key to tackle some of the major challenges in biology and medicine, for example identifying novel biomarkers for early disease diagnosis and developing low-cost point-of-care diagnostics.

Professor Greg Nordin joined the faculty of the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at Brigham Young University in 2005. From 1992 to 2005 he was at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) where he was the founding director of the university's Nano and Micro Devices Center, which was created as an independent research center by the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees. While director of the center, he created a 7,600 sq. ft. cleanroom facility for nano and microfabricated devices to pursue research activities in photonics, MEMS, microfluidics, and sensors. Prof. Nordin has led numerous large research programs, and has been principal investigator on research grants from government and industry totaling $18M. He is the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award (1996) for promising young faculty, and twice received the UAH Outstanding Researcher Award as well as the UAH Foundation Award for Research and Creative Achievement. Prof. Nordin's current research is focused on developing 3D printing for microfluidic devices and applications. In March 2018 Prof. Nordin gave a TED talk on his group's work, which is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T122fzOEVYE.

Ian Papautsky is the Richard and Loan Hill Professor in the biomedical engineering department. His lab focuses on using microfluidics to innovate blood analysis. Papautsky was one of the pioneers of the inertial microfluidics technology for label-free isolation and analysis of rare cells. His recent work has focused on applying this approach to the fractionation of blood, as well as capture and subsequent molecular profile analysis of circulating tumor cells for liquid biopsy. Papautsky is also co-director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics, an industry-university collaborative research center that fosters interactions between academics and businesses in the areas of medical devices, pharmacology, and precision agriculture. Papautsky joined the University of Illinois Chicago in 2016. He has been recognized with many awards and honors, including Ohio Bioscience 30 in Their 30s. He is fellow of the AIMBE and the RSC.

Dr. Jianping Fu is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Cell & Developmental Biology at the University of Michigan. Dr. Fu’s research focuses on stem cell bioengineering, developmental bioengineering, mechanobiology, and microfluidics. Dr. Fu and his co-workers' research has contributed significantly to the emerging field of "Artificial Embryos", which was selected by the MIT Technology Review as “10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2018”. Dr. Fu is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the BMES-CMBE Rising Star Award, the ACS Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, and numerous awards from the University of Michigan. Dr. Fu is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineers (IAMBE), and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). Dr. Fu was a member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) Guidelines Working Group from 2019 to 2021 and is currently a member of the ISSCR Publications Committee. He is a council member of the Biomedical Engineering Society Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group (BMES CMBE-SIG). Dr. Fu currently serves as the Associate Editor of npj Regenerative Medicine and is an Editorial or Advisory Board Member of Cell Stem Cell, Biophysical Journal, Cell Regeneration, Mechanobiology in Medicine, and Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. Additionally, Dr. Fu is a Founding Member of the Catalysts Program of EMBO Journal.

Dr. Joseph Potkay received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan under the direction of MEMS pioneer Dr. Ken Wise in 2006. Since 2006, he has served as a research investigator at the Department of Veterans Affairs with the goal of bringing the huge potential of micro- and nano-technologies to bear on issues critical to the Veteran population. He additionally serves as research assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan. Dr. Potkay has 45 peer-reviewed publications, four patents, has presented his research at local, national, and international conferences, and has been interviewed by Public Radio, Nature Magazine, and CNN regarding his artificial lung research. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and member of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS), the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs (ASAIO), and the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization. He serves or has served on the editorial boards of the Micromachines and ASAIO Journals and the EMBC and ASAIO conferences. His artificial lung research has been continuously funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs and NIH since 2007.

Dr. Levine, founder of ALine, Inc., is an entrepreneur, technologist, and inventor. She has a unique blend of technical expertise in both bioanalytical science and manufacturing process development. Prior to founding ALine, Dr. Levine developed bioanalytical technology to support life science research. While at Monsanto, her lab led the industry in the application of fluorescence polarization for high throughput screening for novel therapeutics. In 1998 she joined Spectrum Laboratories as Director of Hollow Fiber Manufacture and Product Development. Dr. Levine earned her Ph.D. at Washington University, St. Louis, MO , and her B.S. in Biochemistry and BA in German from the University of Missouri, Columbia, MO. In 2003 she was a visiting scholar at the UCLA Anderson School of Business. In 2000 she was the chair of the Gordon Conference on Bioanalytical Sensors. She is the co-author on a dozen publications, and several patents.

Prof. Mark A. Burns is the T. C. Chang Professor of Engineering and a Professor in both Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He obtained his MS and PhD degrees in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and his BS degree from the University of Notre Dame. Prof. Burns has over 350 publications, patents, and presentations. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Institute for Chemical Engineers, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He has won numerous awards including the Food, Pharmaceutical, and Bioengineering Division Award from AIChE, and both a Teaching Excellence Award and a Research Excellence Award from the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He has also served in a variety of administrative positions at Michigan including Chair of the Chemical Engineering Department, Advisor to the Dean of Engineering, and Executive Director of Mcubed and Research Innovation in the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Noah Malmstadt is Professor at the University of Southern California. He received a BS in Chemical Engineering from Caltech and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Washington. Following postdoctoral work at UCLA, he joined the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at USC in 2007. Malmstadt is the recipient of a 2012 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award. His research focuses on microfluidic strategies to facilitate material fabrication and biophysical analysis. He has pioneered the integration of ionic liquids as solvents in droplet microreactors and the application of microfluidic systems to synthesizing biomimetic cell membranes. Microfluidic analytical techniques he has developed include methods for measuring the permeability of cell membranes to druglike molecules and techniques for measuring ionic currents through membrane proteins.

Riya Aggarwal is a student researcher at the Potkay Lab at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and the ECLS Lab at the University of Michigan. She will earn her Bachelor of Science in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology with a Double Minor in Art & Design and Sociology of Health & Medicine from the University of Michigan in May 2024. Her interests and experience lie in artificial bio-nanotechnology research, namely working to create 3D printed microfluidic devices. Riya Aggarwal’s research focuses on formulating hemocompatible UV-resins for the development of biomimetic, microfluidic 3D-printed artificial lungs. She has conducted extensive research in formulations and material testing under Dr. Joseph Potkay, exploring the nonthrombogenic effects of imbuing PDMS-based resin for stereolithography with hydrophilic molecules. Pursuing a career in medicine, Riya Aggarwal is committed to the goal of pushing medicine towards bolstering vulnerable populations, advancing current knowledge, and finding creative solutions to complex problems.

Robbyn K. Anand is the Suresh Faculty Fellow and Carlyle G. Caldwell Endowed Chair in Chemistry at Iowa State University. Her group has developed methods for circulating tumor cell analysis, electrokinetic enrichment and separation of chemical species within water-in-oil droplets, and more sensitive bioanalysis at arrays of wireless bipolar electrodes. Prof. Anand also founded the Midwest Retreat for Diversity in Chemistry - an annual event aimed at the retention of underrepresented groups in the chemical enterprise.

Prof. Ryan D. Sochol is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering within the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). Prof. Sochol received his B.S. from Northwestern University, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining the faculty at UMD, Prof. Sochol served as: (i) an NIH Postdoctoral Trainee within the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, (ii) Director of the Micro Mechanical Methods for Biology (M3B) Laboratory Program within the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center at UC Berkeley, and (iii) a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tokyo. In 2019, Prof. Sochol was elected Co-President of the Mid-Atlantic Micro/Nano Alliance. His group received IEEE MEMS Outstanding Student Paper Awards in both 2019 and 2021 and the Springer Nature Best Paper Award (Runner-Up) in 2022. Prof. Sochol received the NSF CAREER Award in 2020 and the Early Career Award from the IOP Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering in 2021, and was recently honored as an inaugural Rising Star by the journal, Advanced Materials Technologies, in 2023.

Prof. Shuichi Takayama’s research interests started with bioorganic synthesis at the University of Tokyo and Scripps Research Institute. Subsequently he pursued postdoctoral studies in bioengineered microsystems at Harvard University as a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Fellow. He spent 17 years at the University of Michigan in the Biomedical Engineering Department and Macromolecular Science and Engineering Program, then moved to the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory School of Medicine in the summer of 2017. He is an associate editor of Integrative Biology and recipient of the Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize. He is also the Director of the Nakatani RIES Program which promotes international undergraduate student internships between the US and Japan.

Dr. Sunitha Nagrath is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at University of Michigan. Dr. Nagrath received her Ph.D. in 2004 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY in Mechanical Engineering. She did her postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical/Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, under the mentorship of Dr. Toner. Dr. Nagrath is the leading scientist who designed the MEMS based technology, “CTC-Chip” for the sensitive isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from the blood of cancer patients. She joined the University of Michigan in 2010 as a tenure track faculty, where she established her laboratory focused on engineering innovative microfluidic devices and nanomaterials for implementing personalized precision medicine via liquid biopsy. Dr. Nagrath’s major focus of research is on understanding cell trafficking in cancer through the isolation, characterization, and study of circulating cells and extracellular vesicles in the peripheral blood of cancer patients. She is a co-director of the Liquid Biopsy Shared Resource at UMICH Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she oversees the services of isolation and characterization of biomarkers and their implementation in clinical studies. She is an elected fellow of AIMBE and received several accolades including, Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award, and NIH Director’s New innovator award. Dr. Nagrath is the co-founder and the board member of Labyrinth Biotech, a biotechnology company commercializing some of the technologies that are developed in her lab.

Tyler Ray is currently an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He received his BS and MS in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina and his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Ray received his postdoctoral training as a fellow at Northwestern University in the Rogers Research Group. Ray is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award (2023) and is currently an NIH COBRE research project leader. Professor Ray’s research focus is at the intersection of materials science, additive manufacturing, and wearable sensors.

Vivek Rajasenan is a Graduate Student at the Di Carlo Lab at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his undergraduate degree in Automotive Engineering and is currently pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. His research focuses on 3d printed microfluidics with applications in inertial microfluidics and complex particle and functional fiber fabrication.