People of the Health Maker Lab
The Health Maker Lab Network
Our expert mentors help students develop their innovations into practical solutions that advance clinical practice, strengthen care delivery models, and improve health outcomes.
Irfan Ahmad, Ph.D.
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, Ph.D.
David Atkins is the director of art and design facilities.
Rashid Bashir, Ph.D.
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. He has been involved in 3 startups that have licensed his technologies (BioVitesse, Inc., Daktari Diagnostics, and, most recently, Prenosis, Inc.).
Lisa Bievenue
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, Ph.D.
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. He has been named the recipient of the Illinois MatSE Young Alumnus Award (2011) and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2010). Additionally, Professor Braun has co-founded 3 companies.
Martin (Marty) Burke, M.D., Ph.D.
Marty Burke is the May and Ving Lee Professor for Chemical Innovation and chemistry professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and formerly 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
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 Cohen
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 served as founding director of the Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute.
Brian Cunningham
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, Ph.D.
Elif Ertekin was the 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, Ph.D.
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. The Fouke laboratory research group focuses on the cross-disciplinary intersection of geology and molecular biology (Geobiology) and various applications including human medicine, space exploration, and environmental stability. Additionally, Dr. Fouke serves as a Health Innovation Professor in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.
Molly Goldstein, Ph.D.
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.
Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler, Ph.D.
Elizabeth Hsiao Wecksler is a professor of mechanical science & engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and serves as Interim Director of the Health Care Engineering Systems Center. 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, M.D.
Mark Johnson is a clinical associate professor in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. Additionally, he is a physician with Carle Health specializing in Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Johnson serves as the Co-Director of the IDEA Course taught to Carle Illinois medical students.
Bilal Karim
Bilal Karim is an Innovation Intern with the Health Maker Lab in the Office of Research and Innovation. Bilal is currently an undergraduate student and works closely with the College of Medicine leadership to promote new activities and initiatives that focus on integrating medicine and engineering. He has been involved with Health Innovation Research Day, the annual Make-a-Thon, and the healthcare track within the Cozad New Venture Challenge. Bilal is also an undergraduate research assistant at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Most recently, he was named a Joshua L. Grafton Leadership Scholar by the Illinois Leadership Center.
Ruby Mendenhall, Ph.D.
Ruby Mendenhall serves as the associate 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, MA, MFA
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, M.D.
Antonios Michalos is a clinical assistant professor at the Department of Medicine (Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep and Allergy) at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine and the executive associate director at the Health Care Engineering Systems Center. 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
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
William Mischo is the Bibliometrics and Information Research Librarian and the Berthold Family Professor Emeritus 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, Ph.D.
Jeffrey Moore served as the director of Beckman Institute and is the Stanley O. Ikenberry Endowed Chair Emeritus in the Department of Chemistry. 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, Ph.D.
Michael Oelze is a professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Grainger College of Engineering and Health Innovation Professor at 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.
Aric Rindfleisch, Ph.D.
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, Ph.D.
Gene Robinson is the Maybelle Leland Swanlund Endowed Chair in the Department of Entomology and Director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. He 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, Ph.D.
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, Ph.D.
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
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
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
Rachel Switzky is the Director of the Siebel Center for Design and Assistant Professor of Technology Entrepreneurship. 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, M.S., MBA
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, Ph.D.
Huimin Zhao is the Steven L. Miller Chair professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and Director of the Molecular Maker Lab. 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. Dr. Zhao’s laboratory focuses on protein-structure relationship and mechanisms surrounding gene expression and regulation.