CUBEC
Canadian Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Conference
Academic Research Panel A
Dr. Carolina Tropini
University of British Columbia
Dr. Carolina Tropini is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the School of Biomedical Engineering. She is a Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator and in 2020 was the first Canadian to be awarded the Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D Scholar in the field of Engineering. Dr. Tropini received her BSc in Biophysics with Honours and conducted her PhD in Biophysics at Stanford University. Following her PhD, Dr. Tropini completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Microbiology at Stanford.
The Tropini lab is a cross-disciplinary group that incorporates techniques from diverse disciplines to engineer microbes with the goal of improving human health.
Dr. Leo Chou
University of Toronto
Dr. Leo Chou is an assistant professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. He is also one of fifteen Principal Investigators funded by the Medicine by Design initiative. Dr. Chou's research focuses on the development of programmable nucleic acid nanotechnology for therapeutic applications. Prior to his current position, Dr. Chou was a Banting postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Wyss Institute, and the Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology department at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. Dr. Chou obtained his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto in 2014.
Dr. Allen Ehrlicher
McGill University
Dr. Allen Ehrlicher is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering and a Canada Research Chair in Active Biological Mechanics. He received his BSc in Physics from UT Austin and his MSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Leipzig working with Josef Käs. He was then a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University and Medical School. Dr. Ehrlicher joined the McGill University faculty in 2013 in the newly formed Department of Bioengineering. For the last two decades, he has studied active mechanics in biology; how these systems generate, respond to, and resist forces. The applications of his research include bettering our understanding of disease pathology, improving human health outcomes, and guiding the design of bioinspired materials such as strong composites.
Dr. Kyla Sask
McMaster University
Dr. Kyla Sask is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and an associate member of the School of Biomedical Engineering at McMaster University. She received her BSc in Chemical Engineering from Queen’s University, PhD in Biomedical Engineering from McMaster and completed a postdoctoral program in the Advanced Biomaterials Lab at Queen’s University. Dr. Sask previously worked at Interface Biologics Inc. in Toronto for several years as an Associate Research Engineer where she contributed to the development of Endexo™, an antithrombogenic technology (acquired by Evonik) utilized in various medical devices. Her research focuses on blood contacting biomaterials, protein and cell interactions, surface modification and characterization, biosensors, and nanomaterials.
Academic Research Panel B
Dr. Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu
McGill University
Dr. Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu received his PhD in Physics from Humboldt University, Berlin. He has held research and academic positions at Carnegie-Mellon University, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, University of California Davis, and Intellectual Ventures Laboratory. In 2017 he joined McGill University as a Professor of Bioengineering. His research explores optical and electrical properties of biomaterials and he is interested in global health and global development challenges.
Dr. Gelareh Hajian
Queen’s University
Dr. Gelareh Hajian has held the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen’s University since February 2021. She received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Her research focuses on physiological signal processing and upper arm end-point force/torque and movement modelling. She has developed algorithms to accurately model the exerted force under various experimental conditions. Her work resulted in a novel approach that incorporated high density EMG data and kinematic information to improve the performance of force modelling, which significantly outperformed other methods previously demonstrated in the literature.
Dr. Michael Kallos
University of Calgary
Dr. Michael Kallos is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, and the Associate Director of the Pharmaceutical Production Research Facility, all at the University of Calgary. He is the Director of the Biomedical Engineering Calgary Initiative, Interim Department Head for Biomedical Engineering, as well as a member of the McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health. A chemical engineer by training, Dr. Kallos performs research in stem cell bioprocess engineering - a key element in the clinical implementation of regenerative medicine and cell therapies. His work is key to the industrial/clinical scale-up and production of cell and biomaterial therapies.
Dr. Matthias Görges
BC Children's Hospital Research Institute
Dr. Görges is a Scientist at the Research Institute, BC Children’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor (Partner) in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Matthias holds an MSc in Biomedical Engineering from the Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg, Germany, and a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Utah, USA. A member of trans-disciplinary research teams in both pediatric anesthesia and digital health innovation, his research focuses on the development and evaluation of predictive analytics algorithms, mobile health interventions, and clinical informatics platforms to leverage clinical and patient-provided data.