People

Irfan Ahmad serves as the executive director of the Health Maker Lab and is assistant dean for research for the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He also is the executive director for interdisciplinary initiatives for the Grainger College of Engineering. His research interests involve bionanotechnology, nanomedicine, sensors, and precision agriculture. Irfan recently helped found Avicenna Community Health Center, a social entrepreneurial endeavor, providing high-quality, culturally-competent, integrated preventive and curative healthcare services to the uninsured residents.

David Atkins is the director of art and design facilities.

Rashid Bashir is dean of The Grainger College of Engineering, the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research group is interested in developing new technologies for precision and personalized medicine, and 3D bio-fabrication of cellular systems.

Lisa Bievenue is the director of Informatics Programs, where she manages projects and coordinates proposals for interdisciplinary research and instructional programs involving informatics. Her education research efforts have been directed toward project evaluation of education and outreach projects in computer and computational science. She is also involved in educational research on making and design activities in middle school classrooms.

Paul Braun is the director of the Materials Research Laboratory and professor of Materials Science and Engineering. His research interests are energy storage, polymers, self-assembly, electronic materials and photonics. His lab, The Braun Group, focuses on new functional materials for energy storage and solar energy harvesting.

Martin Burke is a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the associate dean for research at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. His research focuses on the synthesis and study of small-molecule natural products that perform protein-like functions.

Elisandro Cabada is an Assistant Professor and the Medical and Bioengineering Librarian in the Grainger Engineering Library where he serves the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. As faculty in the Innovation, Discovery, DEsign, and DAta  (IDEA) Lab, he provides research, instruction, and support for emerging technologies, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Neal J. Cohen is a professor in the Department of Psychology, the Neuroscience Program, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from University of California San Diego. He serves as founding director of the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute.

Brian Cunningham has authored or co-authored 173 peer-reviewed journal papers, 86 issued US patents, 137 conference talks, and has delivered 130 invited lectures. His work has won numerous awards, and he was named the Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering. His research interests include biophotonics, lab-on-a-chip, and applications in health diagnostics.

Elif Ertekin is the current director and principal investigator for the Nanomanufacturing Node. She is engaged in research in computational materials design, mechanical properties at the nanoscale, electronic properties of materials for energy storage and conversion, nanoscale phase transitions, properties of interfaces between dissimilar materials, and defect-property relationships for materials.

Bruce Fouke is a professor of geology, and serves on multiple science panels at NSF, DOE and NASA. Results from his scientific research have been reported on in National Geographic, the New York Times, and National Public Radio.

Molly Goldstein serves as the director of the Product Design Lab. While obtaining her Ph.D., Molly was awarded the College of Engineering Outstanding Research Award and was a Bilsland Fellow. Her research focuses on student designer trade-off decisions through the study of their design actions and thinking.

Lisa Goodpaster is the Associate Director for Project Management at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. She is also a member of the Health Maker Lab Executive Team. Lisa has worked in healthcare for over 29 years, 27 of those years with Carle Foundation Hospital before coming to Carle Illinois. Her background and education includes, but is not limited to, Community Health, Health Administration, and Training and Development.

Elizabeth Hsiao Wecksler is a professor of mechanical science & engineering at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. She directs the Human Dynamics and Controls Laboratory (HDCL) in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. She was awarded the Distinguished Engineering Educator Awardee – Society of Women Engineers.

Mark Johnson is a clinical instructor for the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He is a physician with The Carle Foundation.

Kesh Kesavadas works at the forefront of virtual reality and its application to medicine. He developed the world’s first stand-alone virtual reality robotic surgical simulator (RoSS) and also co-founded two start-up companies. He serves as the director of Healthcare Engineering Systems Center.

Xiuling Li is interim director for the Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory.  Her research interests involve nanowires, nanoelectronics, and nanophotonics.

Ruby Mendenhall serves as the assistant dean for diversity and democratization of health innovation at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Her research examines how living in racially segregated neighborhoods with high levels of violence affects black mothers’ mental and physical health.

Alan Mette is the director of the School of Art + Design. Mette serves as the chair of the Foundations Program and Studio Arts Division as well as co-chair of the Metals Program. While serving as interim associate dean of academic affairs, he’s also an active member in several committees.

Antonios Michalos is a clinical assistant professor of medicine. He is the former director of medical research at ISS Inc., a world leader in biomedical instrumentation research and development and in translation and commercialization of biomedical optical technologies.

Lowell Miller is the fabrication supervisor for the Illinois School of Architecture (ISoA) Fabrication Shops. Lowell oversees operations in the ISoA woodshop, laser cutter lab, digital fabrication shop and print/3D print lab. He also developed the Root to Roof program, which minimizes urban wood and tree waste by turning that material into usable lumber for design build projects.

William Mischo is head of the Grainger Engineering Library Information Center and the Berthold Family Professor in Information Access and Discovery at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has received numerous awards and published over 70 article and conference papers. He also served as acting dean and university librarian at Illinois from February 2017 to January 2018.

Jeffrey Moore serves as the director of Beckman Institute. He has published over 300 articles in journals such as Macromolecules, the Journal of Chemical Education, Advanced Materials and the Journal of Materials Chemistry. He has received awards for both teaching and research, and was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor.

Michael Oelze is a professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He is a part of a company, Tissue Differentiation Intelligence, LLC, that develops small probes that can automatically detect nerve and other structures using ultrasound. His research interests include monitoring therapy response and many others.

Jeffery S. Poss is a professor in the school of Architecture. He currently serving as interim director of the school. His studio teachings focus on the development of concept, materials, and detail into architectural design. His firm has designed and completed numerous award-winning proposals.

Aric Rindfleisch is a John M. Jones Professor of Marketing and Executive Director of the Illinois MakerLab. His 3D printing-focused research has been published in several leading academic journals and has won numerous awards. Aric also teaches at all levels and was named one of the Best 300 Professors in America by Princeton Review.

Gene Robinson pioneered the application of genomics to the study of social behavior, led the effort to sequence the honeybee genome, and authored or co-authored over 300 publications. He has many honors and awards, and has trained 29 postdoctoral associates and 23 doctoral students, over half with faculty positions in academia.

Vishal Sachdev is the director and co-founder of the Illinois MakerLab. He has taught IT strategy, analytics, visualization, artificial intelligence in business, digital marketing, digital fabrication, design thinking, fintech, system development, data modeling and SQL. He is researching the role of technology in enabling new approaches to teaching and learning.

Mauro Sardela serves as the director of research facilities for the Materials Research Lab. His research experience covers several fields of materials fabrication and characterization. He’s been involved in the growth and characterization of various thin film and multilayer systems including epitaxial heterostructures and metals by various growth techniques.

Janet Sinn-Hanlon is a medical illustrator with the DesignGroup@VetMed. She specializes in creating 3D models from scientific data, such as CT and MRI, for 3D prints, implant and prosthetic prototypes, and interactive 3D educational tools in AR and VR. She also does 2D and 3D illustrations and animations for presentations and publications.

Casey Smith is the senior instructional lab coordinator in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He manages 20 instructional labs spanning the ECE department curriculum including the ECE Open Lab, a creative makerspace for students across campus. Prior to joining the department in 2014 he was the Senior Design Engineer at Opal Kelly Inc. and a Research Engineer at the University of Chicago Engineering Center.

Rachel Switzky is the Director of the Siebel Center for Design. Prior to her current appointment, she has been a global design leader working with Fortune 100 companies over the past 20 years. Most recently, she served as an Executive Director at IDEO, the company who pioneered the concept of design thinking. For the last decade in this role, she helped teams imagine futures and then put them into action, focusing on digital design, emergent technologies and impact at-scale.

Jed Taylor is the Executive Director of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering’s Technology Entrepreneur Center and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University’s EnterpriseWorks incubator.  He is responsible for directing the Illinois Innovation Corps programs and other entrepreneurship programs run out of the TEC.

Huimin Zhao is a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. He has won numerous research and teaching awards, authored and co-authored over 290 research articles and over 20 issued and pending patent applications. His primary research interests are in the development and applications of synthetic biology tools to address society’s most daunting challenges in health.

Irfan Ahmad serves as the executive director of the Health Maker Lab. His research interests involve bionanotechnology, nanomedicine, sensors, and precision agriculture. Irfan recently helped found Avicenna Community Health Center, a social entrepreneurial endeavor, providing high-quality, culturally-competent, integrated, preventive, and curative healthcare services to the uninsured residents.

Aadeel Akhtar is CEO and Founder of PSYONIC, a company whose mission is to develop advanced prostheses that are affordable for everyone. Dr. Akhtar received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience and M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. He received a B.S. in Biology in 2007 and M.S. in Computer Science in 2008 at Loyola University Chicago.

Jennifer Amos is Director of Student Assessment and Evaluation, Quality Officer, Carle Illinois College of Medicine. She is teaching associate professor at the Department of Bioengineering. She is engaged in global health initiatives.

Lisa Bievenue is the director of Informatics Programs, where she manages projects and coordinates proposals for interdisciplinary research and instructional programs involving informatics. Her education research efforts have been directed toward project evaluation of education and outreach projects in computer and computational science. She is also involved in educational research on making and design activities in middle school classrooms.

Paul Braun is the director of the Materials Research Laboratory and professor of Materials Science and Engineering. His research interests are energy storage, polymers, self-assembly, electronic materials and photonics. His lab, The Braun Group, focuses on new functional materials for energy storage and solar energy harvesting.

Dr. Mukund Chorghade is Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer, THINQ Pharma / MVRC Research and Ayurvidya Healthcare Innovations. He is the CSO, Chicago Discovery Solutions and APINOVO. He holds / has had Adjunct Research Professor / Visiting Fellow / Visiting Scientist appointments at Caltech, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Northwestern, Princeton, Rutgers, Univ. of Chicago (USA), University of British Columbia (Canada), Cambridge, Strathclyde, (UK), College de France, Universite’ Louis Pasteur (France), ICT, CSIR, KHRC (India), and others. He provides synthetic chemistry and pharmaceutical development expertise to academic laboratories, pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies. His research interests are in Drug Discovery and Development Process Chemistry Derived Medicinal Chemistry, Traditional Medicine derived New Chemical Entities. His discovery of sterically protected and electronically activated metalloporphyrin catalysts called “chemosynthetic livers” finds utility in drug metabolism, valorization of biomass and environmental remediation. He is also qualified as an expert in patent trials. He earned his B. Sc. and M. Sc. degrees from the University of Poona, and a Ph. D. in organic chemistry from Georgetown University.

Lisa Davis is a neonatology nurse at the Carle Foundation.

Gary Durack joined SIMnext as CEO in 2016. He leads a dynamic team of engineers, clinical experts, and commercial professionals in the delivery to clinicians of novel simulation-based training, education, and certification products that are improving patient care and reducing healthcare costs around the world. In 2015 he founded the TEKMILL, a fast-growing contract design and fabrication business located at the University of Illinois Research Park.

Laura Frerichs is director of the University of Illinois Research Park and EnterpriseWorks business incubator.  She is responsible for managing startup company oversight and supporting the University’s economic development efforts.

Rajul Gandhi, Pharm.D., M.B.A. has over 25 years of experience in healthcare serving as a clinician, leader, and researcher.   He is the Clinical Director of Population Health for Carle Health and is currently participating in two research trials and serves as one of the clinical leads for the Population Health Innovation Committee.

Jeff Ginger serves as the director of the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab. He is also the program coordinator at the Illinois Informatics Institute and is an adjunct lecturer at the iSchool at Illinois.

Molly Goldstein serves as the director of the Product Design Lab. While obtaining her Ph.D., Molly was awarded the College of Engineering Outstanding Research Award and was a Bilsland Fellow. Her research focuses on student designer trade-off decisions through the study of their design actions and thinking.

Holly Golecki is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Bioengineering Department and Carle Illinois College of Medicine. She holds degrees in Materials Science and Bioengineering. Her research experience focuses on mechanics of biomaterials and their applications in devices. She works to increase access to engineering and robotics for students of all ages.

Viktor Gruev is an associate professor at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. His specialty lies in ECE.

Aiguo Han is a research assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. His research interests include acoustics, biomedical ultrasound, and machine learning applications in medical imaging.

Wendy Heller serves as the head of the Psychology Department and is a professor at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. She researches the neural mechanisms associated with emotion-cognition interactions and their implications for psychopathology.

Laura Hickenbottom is a nurse practitioner in the neonatology department at the Carle Foundation.

Kesh Kesavadas works at the forefront of virtual reality and its application to medicine. He developed the world’s first stand-alone virtual reality robotic surgical simulator (RoSS) and also co-founded two start-up companies. He serves as the director of Healthcare Engineering Systems Center.

Cecilia Leal is an assistant professor in Materials Science and Engineering. She also researches biomaterials.

King Li, M.D., MBA, is the inaugural dean and chief academic officer of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He completed his medical training and radiology residency at the University of Toronto and a MRI Fellowship at the University of Michigan. He is a clinician, researcher, educator, and inventor in molecular imaging and radiology. His experience includes leadership, research, clinical, educational and entrepreneurial roles at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center and Stanford University, as well as Wake Forest and Houston Methodist Hospital. He has authored or co-authored over 140 journal articles and also holds 18 patents, with another six pending.

Citlali Lopez-Ortiz is an assistant professor in Kinesiology and Community Health. She holds a Ph.D. in Kinesiology and an MA in biomechanics. 

Deana McDonagh is a professor in Industrial Design and faculty at Beckman Institute of Advanced Science and Technology. Her research involves emotional user-product relationships and how empathy plays a role in that relationship. 

Pramod Mallipaddi is a clinical associate professor at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He is also a physician in the neonatology department at the Carle Foundation.

Nasiruddin Mansury is a neonatologist at the Carle Foundation.

Noelle Morey is a neonatologist at the Carle Foundation.

Michael Oelze is a professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. He is a part of a company, Tissue Differentiation Intelligence, LLC, that develops small probes that can automatically detect nerve and other structures using ultrasound. His research interests include monitoring therapy response and many others.

He is a rheumatologist at Carle Clinic.  His medical interests include- connective tissue diseases, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Mauro Sardela serves as the director of research facilities for the Materials Research Lab. His research experience covers several fields of materials fabrication and characterization. He’s been involved in the growth and characterization of various thin film and multilayer systems including epitaxial heterostructures and metals by various growth techniques.

Temitope Shodunke works as a physician in the critical care and nephrology departments at the Carle Foundation.

Casey Smith is the senior instructional lab coordinator in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He manages 20 instructional labs spanning the ECE department curriculum including the ECE Open Lab, a creative makerspace for students across campus. Prior to joining the department in 2014 he was the Senior Design Engineer at Opal Kelly Inc. and a Research Engineer at the University of Chicago Engineering Center.

Nahil Sobh is a data scientist, affiliated with the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  His expertise includes deep learning, machine learning, and high performance computing.

Rachel Switzky holds two degrees in industrial design from Illinois and has worked with a broad range of professions as an executive at the global design firm IDEO in San Francisco. She most recently served on the leadership team of IDEO’s 150-person studio managing a multimillion-dollar design portfolio.

Shengchang Tang is an assistant professor in Materials Science and Engineering. He earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at MIT. Currently, his research involves using polymer science to create new biomaterials.