USC Biomedical Microsystems Laboratory

Ellis Meng is the Shelly and Ofer Nemirovsky Chair of Convergent Biosciences and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California where she has been since 2004. She is also the Vice Dean of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She was previously Dwight C. and Hildagarde E. Baum Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering from 2015-2018 and an inaugural holder of a Gabilan Distinguished Professorship in Science and Engineering from 2016-2019. She received the B.S. degree in engineering and applied science and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1997, 1998, and 2003, respectively. Her research interests include biomedical microelectromechanical systems (bioMEMS), implantable biomedical microdevices, microfluidics, integrated microsystems, microsensors and actuators, biocompatible polymer microfabrication, and packaging. Her honors include the NSF CAREER award, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Early Career Award, 2009 TR35 Young Innovator Under 35, Viterbi Early Career Chair, ASEE Curtis W. McGraw Research Award, 2018 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Technical Achievement Award, and 2019 IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award. She is a fellow of NAI, IEEE, ASME, BMES, and AIMBE. She serves as the North American representative on the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society AdCom. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering and Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering, Micro- and Nano-mechanical Systems. She was co-chair of the 2017 IEEE MEMS conference. She is also an inventor, co-founder of two companies based on her research, and author of a textbook on bioMEMS.

Kee Scholten is a postdoctoral scholar in the Biomedical Microsystems Laboratory at the University of Southern California. Kee graduated from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2009 with a B.S. in Applied Physics. He completed his Ph.D. in Applied Physics at the University of Michigan under Professor Edward Zellers in 2014, with a research focus on gas-phase microsensors for environmental monitoring and biomedical diagnostics. His current and on-going work entails the development of implantable microsensors for use in biomedical applications. His research explores the development of micro- and nano-technology for ubiquitous chemical and biomedical sensing, with a focus on microelectromechanical systems, including microfluidic transducers for chemical sensing and flexible electrochemical interfaces for neural-machine interfaces.

Jessica Ortigoza-Diaz received the B.S. degree in Mechatronics Engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2013 and the M.S. degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2018. In 2012, She did a Summer Research Internship at the Biomedical Microsystems Lab where she worked on the development of wireless drug delivery devices. Since 2014, she joined USC, as a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering, where she was awarded the CON-USC Graduate Scholarship. She is currently working on strategies to improve dry and wet adhesion between polymer-polymer and polymer-metal interfaces to enhance polymer-based devices lifetime. Jessica enjoys traveling, football, music and movies.

As an undergraduate, Tuan was involved in several research projects at Caltech. In the laboratory of John Abelson, Ph.D., he screened mRNA splicing mutants of S. cerevesiae to isolate and characterize new proteins involved in the spliceosome complex. He also worked with Howard Lipshitz, Ph.D., purifying and measuring heat shock protein(HSP) 83 protein gradient in developing Drosophila melanogaster embryos to evaluate its expression. In addition, he conducted E.M.S. mutagenesis of Drosophila melanogaster to generate a bank of mutant strains of the Hindsight gene. After graduation from Caltech, he joined the Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Laboratory of Brian Ross, M.D., Ph.D., F.R.C.S. at the Huntingtin Medical Research Institute. He performed in vivo proton MRI and MRS brain exams on patients with Alzheimer's, PML,Parkinson's (PD), and Huntington's diseases (HD) to study the biochemical pathology. Furthermore, he assessed short term changes of free choline metabolite concentrations in the brain following oral ingestion of choline supplements using quantitative 31P MRS(spectroscopy). Also, he monitored major cellular metabolites in vivo of tissue neural transplants in HD and PD patients using MRI and MRS to determine viability and proliferation.

As a doctoral graduate student at UCLA, Tuan worked with Jeff Twiss, M.D., Ph.D. and Carolyn Schanen, M.D., Ph.D. to screened for mRNA mutants of IT15 gene using RT-PCR, SSCP and ASO analyses. In addition, he generated eukaryotic expression plasmid constructs carrying wild-type and mutated forms (by site-directed mutagenesis) of Trk A nerve growth factor (NGF) receptor cDNA for transient transfection of neuronal cells.　Tuan joined the laboratory of Marie-Françoise Chesselet, M.D., Ph.D., who focuses on rodent models of human neurodegenerative diseases, including PD. and HD. His dissertation was based on a collaboration with the laboratory of Serge Przedborski, M.D., Ph.D. at Columbia. The main thrust was to study the mechanisms of MPTP-induced degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in mice. He assessed the level of DNA damage induced by systemic MPTP injection in the substantia nigra of several PD mice models using in situ nick translation and light microscopy. In addition, he performed radioligand saturation binding experiments for dopamine transporters in the striatum of MPTP-treated genetically-engineered mice models of Parkinson’s disease.

Nick completed his bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan in 2019. Through his undergrad, he assisted in the Bruns Lab studying closed loop therapy for overactive bladder. In the summer of 2018, Nick worked in Dr. Il-Joo Cho's for a summer research program, assisting in the development of MEMS neural interfaces. In 2020, Nick worked as an R&D intern at Avation Medical, where he worked on developing devices for treating overactive bladder. He began his graduate studies in BME at USC in 2020 and is interested in neural interfaces and bioelectronic medicine. In his free time, Nick enjoys gaming, game development and drawing.

Ping received her bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from University of Wisconsin- Madison in May 2016. She then pursued a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Pennsylvania. During her undergraduate and graduate study, she participated in various projects such as ECG system design and wideband trans-impedance amplifier design. During her PhD study, she hopes to develop implantable neural interfaces for diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders. Her interests include cooking, reading, and traveling.

Trevor graduated from Rice University with a BS in Bioengineering in 2014. He helped develop a novel cell-sorting device at part of a summer internship at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. in 2013. In 2015, he joined the USC BML, and is currently working on a device to wirelessly detect shunt failure in hydrocephalic patients. In his free time he enjoys good television, exercising, and improving his poor cooking skills.

Christopher Larson completed his bachelor's degree in Biomedical (Electrical) Engineering at USC in 2015. His research interests include implantable MEMS devices and neural interfaces, especially as applied in bioelectronic medicine. He previously studied music composition and still makes music. Originally from "Minnesconsin," he enjoys smoky cheeses, bratwursts, craft brews, and cheering on the Twins and Vikings no matter how often they break his heart. His free time is spent reading, hiking, roadtripping, and eating with his wife and dog.

Garrett Soler completed his bachelors degrees in electrical and biomedical engineering at the University of Connecticut (2019). His research interests include implantable devices and low power electronics for biomedical applications. In his spare time Garrett enjoys weightlifting, snowboarding, football, and learning how to fix his dying car because he's too cheap to take it to a mechanic.

Brianna Thielen completed her bachelor's degree in Engineering at Harvey Mudd College in 2014. Later that year, she began working for Second Sight Medical Products as an R&D Engineer, focused on the development of the Orion cortical prosthesis for artificial vision. In 2018, Brianna began her graduate studies in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California, with research focused on neurological medical device development. Outside of work, Brianna enjoys watching and playing sports, traveling, and sharing a pizza with her dog.

Xuechun finished her bachelor’s degree from the joint Biomedical Engineering department between North Carolina State University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 2017. She was doing research to explore the structure of telomere protein related directly to aging. Her interest in medical devices was raised from the senior design project where the team made an affordable oxygen respirator for infants. She joined the BioMEMS lab at USC in 2017 as a Ph.D. student. During her time at USC, she hopes to develop devices that can help to better diagnose, treat and understand human diseases. She loves to ski, cook, and play video games in her free time.

James Yoo completed his bachelor’s degree in December 2008 at the University of California, Berkeley, studying mechanical engineering. In 2009, he started working for Second Sight Medical Products, Inc., in the manufacturing department, where his responsibilities included process development, equipment operation qualification, and process validation for the Argus II retinal prosthetic. In 2011, James and his newly wed wife Stella moved to Philadelphia where she attended medical school. From 2011 to 2013, James held several jobs in the train and automotive industries, and in 2013, he returned to the medical device industry at Stryker Orthobiologics. Here, he focused on process development, process validation, and equipment installation/operation qualification for a future orthopaedic product to be released in 2016. In 2015, James and Stella moved back to Los Angeles where Stella started her residency at the LAC+USC Medical Center and where James began graduate studies in biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California. His passions include coffee, music, television, and movies. On the side, he works out, plays video games, plays guitar, and bakes. For the past few years, he has also been searching for America’s best burger.

Eugene completed his bachelor's degree in 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. While at JHU, worked on MEMS-based self-folding arrays in the Gracias Lab. Eugene also worked part-time at Scanogen, a startup focusing on POC genotyping. His experiences led to a summer internship in 2014 at Imec, in Leuven, Belgium where he developed single cell 3D microgrippers. Eugene loves to play soccer, guitar, and practice Taekwondo in his free time. His hometown is Cerritos so he is also very glad to be back in the west coast.

Alex Baldwin received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville in 2013 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2015 and 2018, respectively. His research interests include polymer micromachining, implantable biomedical sensors, and novel microelectromechanical devices which operate using electrochemical impedance. Dr. Baldwin is a recipient of the USC Viterbi Fellowship and the Alfred E. Mann Institute Fellowship. He is currently working on improving the treatment of hydrocephalus using chronically implanted wireless sensors.

Spending a year at Meng’s lab as a VEST Research Scholar with the aim of working in neural interfaces. Working towards a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London, England. PhD main focus is on adapting a microseismometer, currently bound to Mars on the InSIght mission, for expected conditions on other planetary bodies such as Venus or Europa. Has previously worked in groups at Tsinghua, China and Tokyo-Tech, Japan. Interests include: squash, fencing, surfing, chess and reading. Will always make time for a coffee and a chat.