Jason Gleghorn earned his doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from Cornell University. During his postdoctoral work at Cornell, he developed microfluidic systems to isolate rare circulating tumor cells from patient blood samples and to assay them for chemotherapeutic response. During his postdoctoral research at Princeton University, he used novel microfluidic and microfabrication techniques to study the physical mechanisms of lung branching morphogenesis. At UD, he plans to use his expertise in microfabrication, cell and developmental biology, and computational analysis to investigate the major mechanisms that sculpt tissue form and to exploit these mechanisms to build complex tissue architectures for studying tissue repair and regenerative medicine.
Jeannie Stephens received her doctoral degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Delaware in 2004. Since then, she has been a National Research Council fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a post doctoral fellow at Rice University, and a research scientist at DePuy Synthes (companies of Johnson & Johnson). Stephens first joined BME in September 2013 as temporary faculty and is now an assistant professor of instruction and associate director of BME’s undergraduate program. In this role, she will strengthen the program’s connection with the local medical community, both in clinical and industrial settings, in order to foster undergraduate design projects as well as internship and employment opportunities for our students.
Ryan Zurakowski comes to us from UD’s Electrical & Computer Engineering department, and he is heading our graduate program. We congratulate him on his recent promotion to associate professor with tenure. Zurakowski researches nonlinear control theory and applications, specifically in mathematical biology and medicine. He and his collaborators are working to develop mathematical descriptions of disease systems, and to analyze the dynamics using nonlinear control techniques in order to suggest novel therapeutic approaches. Currently he is focusing on HIV and its treatment.