IMES - Key Persons
Arup K. Chakraborty is one of the 12 Institute Professors at MIT, the highest rank awarded to a MIT faculty member. He served as the founding Director of MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and he is a founding member of the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH, and Harvard. For over two decades, Chakraborty's work has largely focused on bringing together approaches from immunology, physics, and engineering. His interests span T cell signaling, T cell development and repertoire, and a mechanistic understanding of virus evolution, antibody responses, and vaccine design. Since 2016, Chakraborty has also been interested in the role of phase separation in gene regulation. Chakraborty is one of only 25 individuals who are members of all three branches of the US National Academies - National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and National Academy of Engineering. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and has received many other honors including the NIH Director's Pioneer Award, the E. O. Lawrence Medal, the Max Delbruck Prize from the APS, and the Colburn, Professional Progress, and Prausnitz Institute Lectureship from the AIChE. Chakraborty has received 6 teaching awards for his classroom teaching, and 24 of his former lab members are now faculty members at universities around the world. He is a co-author of the recent book "Viruses, Pandemics, & Immunity". Chakraborty previously served on the US defense Science board, and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Wellcome Trust.
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- Distinguished Lecturer, Tel Aviv University
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- Associate Principal Research Scientist
- Director of MIT 's Master of Engineering
Dr. Anthony is Director of MIT's Master of Engineering in Manufacturing Program, Co-Director of the Medical Electronic Device Realization Center, and Deputy Director for the MIT Skoltech Initiative. With over 20 years experience in product realization-Dr. Anthony won an Emmy (from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) in broadcast technical innovation-Dr. Anthony designs instruments and techniques to monitor and control physical systems. His work involves systems analysis and design and calling upon mechanical, electrical, and optical engineering, along with computer science and optimization, to create solutions.
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- Human Resources Administrator
Bio
Brianna has a diverse administrative background and began her Human Resources career in healthcare. After relocating from California to Massachusetts, she took an interest in focusing on higher education. She enjoys a quiet life in Halifax with her husband, daughter, border collie and 11 chickens.
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- Investigator Award of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology
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- Academic Programs Assistant
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- Research Areas / Computational Medicine / Clinical Informatics, Medical Devices
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- Research Areas / Cellular and Molecular Biology and Engineering, Computational Medicine / Clinical Informatics
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- Research Areas / Drug Delivery, Regenerative Medicine / Tissue Engineering
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- HST - London Society Curriculum Support Assistant
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- Clinical Machine Learning Group / Research Areas / Computational Medicine / Clinical Informatics
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- Professor of Medical Engineering, MIT
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- Professor in Medical Engineering and Science, MIT
Elazer R. Edelman is the Edward J. Poitras Professor in Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, where he directs the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science. He is also Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a cardiac intensive care unit cardiologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston.
Edelman received Bachelor of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and in Applied Biology, Master of Science Bioelectrical Engineering and Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from MIT, and M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. Graduate work with Robert Langer defined the mathematics of regulated drug delivery systems. After internal medicine training and clinical fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at BWH he was Research Fellow in Pathology at Harvard Medical School with Morris Karnovsky investigating the biology of vascular repair.
His research interests meld medical and scientific training leveraging pathophysiologic insight to improve clinical decision-making and device design. Studies of endothelial and vascular biology led to discovery of the mutable dynamic of endothelial state and importance in regulation of vascular diseases and cancer. His group reasoned that optimal control of biologic events recapitulated natural regulation. Hence, polymeric controlled drug delivery systems should mimic natural release and vascular implants devised with intimate knowledge of injury they induce. Perivascular and stent-based drug delivery, mechanical organ support and percutaneous heart valves are examples of the former, and therapeutic tissue engineered endothelial cell constructs of the latter.
More than 350 students and fellows have passed through Edelman's laboratory publishing over 900 scientific articles and 90 patents.
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- Fellow of American College of Cardiology
- HST
- Research Areas / Cellular and Molecular Biology and Engineering, Drug Delivery
Edelman is fellow of American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, Association of University Cardiologists, American Society of Clinical Investigation, American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Inventors, National Academy of Medicine, and National Academy of Engineering. As Chief Scientific Advisor of Science: Translational Medicine he has set the tone for the national debate on translational research and innovation. As co-founder of ASTM F04.03 he helped create standards for cardiovascular implants. He served on FDA's Science Board and as ORISE fellow FDA EIR. For bringing cardiovascular translational research to an international level of excellence the Spanish Parliament and King awarded Edelman the Spanish Order of Civil Merit. Most importantly, Elazer is an avid ice hockey goalie, and with his wife Cheryl parents to comedian-writer Alexander, Olympic athlete AJ, and Austin.
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- Professor of Electrical Engineering
Elfar Adalsteinsson, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and of MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology, joined the MIT faculty and the Research Laboratory of Electronics in 2004.
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Academic Programs Coordinator for the Harvard - MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology ( HST )
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- Director of Administration
- Finance
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Career Development Professorship Chair
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- Professor
- Research Areas / Cellular and Molecular Biology and Engineering, Drug Delivery
Jim Collins is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Director of HST Administration
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- Senior Administrative Assistant for the Director
Jessie began as a bench researcher 20 years ago, so generally knows her way around a lab. She has been in the higher education space in the Boston area for almost 20 years, having pursued a Master of Public Health in International Health at Boston University and her undergraduate degree at Brandeis University. She has since worked in public health in the US, Switzerland, and Sierra Leone (with the Harvard School of Public Health FXB Center), in high-end retail, at the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, and most recently as the Director of Operations at the educational non-profit The BioBuilder Educational Foundation, an MIT BE spin-out.
She enjoys getting outside with her husband and two kids to snowshoe, hike, and spend time in the Adirondack mountains. She also loves baking -- from breads to cakes to French macarons (and her family seems to enjoy it as well!).
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- Adminstrative Assistant II
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Research Areas / Cellular and Molecular Biology and Engineering, Structural and Functional Imaging
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- Professor of the Practice
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- Academic Programs Assistant
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- HST Associate Director of Curriculum and Student Affairs
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT
Kwanghun Chung is currently an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, as well as a Core Member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES). He is also a Core Member of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2005, and then moved to Georgia Institute of Technology for his Ph.D. training under the mentorship of Dr. Hang Lu, where he developed automated and integrated microsystems for high-throughput imaging, molecular/behavioral phenotyping, and cell microsurgery of a broad range of living systems.
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- HST Graduate Administrator
Bio
Lian-Ee is a Singaporean native, who received her BA in Biology from Cornell University in 1996. After two and half years as a Research Assistant at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, she decided to pursue her PhD at Tufts University School of Medicine. She joined the lab of Dr. John Coffin, working on the effects of the surrounding chromosome environment on retroviral expression. After completing her PhD in 2006, she returned to Longwood Medical Area as a lab manager in the lab of Dr. Richard Blumberg at Brigham and Women's Hospital, focusing on musocal immunology. She took a short hiatus after the birth of her second child and subsequently became the Lab Manager in the Fiebiger Lab at Children's Hospital, working on food allergies for almost two years. She made her way to the corporate world and became Operations Manager at Widestreets Corp, an IT startup. In the spring of 2014, she decided to return to science and joined LMRT as Lab Manager.
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- Program Coordinator
- HST Program Coordinator
Bio
Maureen started her HMS career 15 years ago in the Division of Medical Sciences. She then transitioned into a role as an Executive Assistant for the Dean of Academic and Clinical Affairs until 2019. Maureen planned many high-level events from the rollout of the Primary Care announcement, the Faculty Development Diversity Taskforce celebration to the Female Leaders in Science 3 day symposium. She was honored by being nominated for the Delores Brown Staff Award during her time in ACA.
Next, she moved into HiTS as an Event and Administrative Coordinator just as the pandemic hit. She was still able to arrange for staff picnics, an anniversary celebration of the lab opening to holiday remote parties.
In July of '22 Maureen joined the HST team as their Program Coordinator for HST. Maureen enjoys traveling with her family, the beach, and shopping.
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Project Manager, HST Curriculum Innovation for HST
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- Principal
- Research Scientist
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- Senior Adminstrative Assistant to Prof. Kwanghun Chung
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- Administrative Assistant II
Mindy Blodgett is the Communications Officer for the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES), working on communications strategies and marketing activities that engage diverse constituencies at MIT and beyond. Before joining IMES, Mindy was the Senior Editor, Head of US-Insights for MIT Technology Review, where she oversaw the development and production of custom editorial content, including articles, research reports and live events.
Mindy has more than 20 years experience as a journalist for both newspapers and B2B media as a writer and editor on a wide range of topics around the intersection of business, society and technology, including time as the senior editor in charge of special projects for CIO magazine.
Mindy holds a bachelor's degree in political science and journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Principal
- Research Scientist
- Associate Professor at Brigham
Natalie Artzi is an Associate Professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She is a principal Research Scientist at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, and is an Associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Leveraging material science, chemistry, imaging and biology, Dr. Artzi's group is dedicated to designing smart material platforms and medical devices to improve human health. Dr. Artzi pioneered basic understanding of tissue:biomaterial interactions and concepts learned have changed the way we view materials. Materials and devices are now being "personalized" by considering specific tissue microenvironments that are altered in the face of disease. Her multidisciplinary team works on developing materials for diagnosis and therapy, and exploit the toolkit available for material scientists to create multifaceted medical devices. Dr. Artzi's graduate thesis work at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion)-under the direction of Prof. Moshe Narkis-defined how polymer:nano-filler interactions dictate structure:function relationships. Her postdoctoral training with Prof. Elazer Edelman at MIT focused on studying tissue:biomaterial interactions to rationally design materials with optimal therapeutic outcome. She served as part of the scientific advisory board of Science Translational Medicine, and as a dedicated mentor she initiated student exchange program between Ort Braude College in Israel and MIT that provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to perform a year of internship under her supervision.
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lydia Bourouiba is a physical applied mathematician concentrating on geophysical problems of hydrodynamic turbulence and on the mathematical modeling of population dynamics and disease transmission. She joined the Department of Mathematics at MIT in January 2010 as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer. She previously worked at the Centre for Disease Modelling in Toronto, Canada on the modeling of influenza. Dr. Bourouiba completed her doctorate from McGill University studying rotating homogeneous turbulence theoretically and numerically. She is now an Assistant Professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT where she continues to focus on problems at the interface of fluid dynamics and disease transmission with the aim of elucidating the fundamental physical mechanisms shaping the epidemiology and disease transmission dynamics in human, animal and plant populations.
Prof. Lydia Bourouiba is Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she founded and directs the Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory. Her research specializes in developing and joining advanced fluid dynamics experiments, biophysics, and applied mathematics to elucidate the fundamental multi-scale dynamics of fluid fragmentation, with particular interest in the resulting mixing, transport, and persistence of particles and organisms relevant for contamination and health, where drops, multi-phase, and complex flows are at the core. More on her recent work can be found at http://lbourouiba.mit.edu/.
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- Delta Electronics Professor
- Research Areas / Computational Medicine / Clinical Informatics
Regina Barzilay is a Delta Electronics professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. Her research interests are in natural language processing, applications of deep learning to chemistry and oncology. She is a recipient of various awards, including the NSF Career Award, the MIT Technology Review TR-35 Award, Microsoft Faculty Fellowship and several Best Paper Awards at NAACL and ACL. In 2017, she received a MacArthur fellowship, an ACL fellowship and an AAAI fellowship. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University, and spent a year as a postdoc at Cornell University. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2023.
More about Professor Barzilay can be found here.
Dr. Cohen has extensive industry experience. He has consulted for many biomedical companies and has co-founded two. He has served on the boards of for-profit and non-profit organizations, and has had public board of directors experience. He has taught courses on how to manage the many issues faced by biomedical companies and in this capacity he has interacted with many biomedical industry leaders. He also has made a number of successful presentations at the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on reimbursement issues. He has also served as an expert witness in patent litigation and corporate litigation cases. Kathleen Kerrigan, Chief Judge of the US Tax Court, cited Dr. Cohen's testimony in support of her opinion in a corporate tax litigation case (US Tax Court Docket No. 6944-11).
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- HST
- Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies / Research Areas / Cellular and Molecular Biology and Engineering, Drug Delivery, Regenerative Medicine / Tissue Engineering
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Administrative Assistant for
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- Administrative Assistant II
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- Integrative Neuromonitoring and Critical Care Informatics Group / Research Areas / Cellular and Molecular Biology and Engineering, Computational Medicine / Clinical Informatics, Medical Devices
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- Academic Programs Administrator for Health Sciences and Technology
- Assistant Director of Academic Programs
Bio
Traci Anderson is the Academic Programs Administrator for Health Sciences and Technology, she manages registration, PhD degree requirements, course listings and supervises event planning.
Traci has worked in higher education administration for over 25 years and with HST since 2006.
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- Professor of Anaesthesia, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital
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- HST MD Admissions Specialist