Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D.

DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF NANOMEDICINE

PROFESSOR

Dr. Ferrari serves as Professor and Director of the Center for NanoMedicine at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine, Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Professor of Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, and President of the Alliance for NanoHealth, Houston.

Education: Dr. Ferrari’s degrees are in Mathematics (Padova, Italy, Dottore in Matematica 1985), and Mechanical Engineering (U.C. Berkeley, M.S. 1987, & Ph.D. 1989).  He attended medical school at Ohio State University (2002-04).

Prior Professional Experience: Dr. Ferrari began his academic career at the University of California, Berkeley, where he tenured in Material Science, Civil Engineering, and Bioengineering.  Upon recruitment to the Ohio State University, he served as the Edgar Hendrickson Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Internal Medicine, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Associate Vice President, Health Sciences Technology and Commercialization, Associate Director of the Dorothy M. Davis Heart and Lung Research Institute and Director of the Biomedical Engineering Center.  Through an arrangement with OSU, Dr. Ferrari also served as Special Expert on Nanotechnology at the National Cancer Institute in 2003-2005, leading in the formulation, refinement, and approval of the NCI's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, currently the world's largest program in medical nanotechnology.

Editorial and Advisory Board and Committees. Dr. Ferrari provides and has provided advisor services to many Federal, State, and International agencies, including the NCI, NHLBI, NIH, NASA, NSF, the DoD, the DoE, the National Research Council, the European Union, and the Governments of Italy and Canada. He is Editor-in-Chief of Biomedical Microdevices (BMMD): BioMEMS and Biomedical Nanotechnbology, which he established in 1995. BMMD is the first archival journal in the field, and ranks sixth among all biomedical engineering journals worldwide. Dr. Ferrari serves regularly as referee for many journals including the Nature periodicals, Science, and PNAS.

Awards and Honors. Dr. Ferrari’s contributions have been recognized by a variety of accolades, including: the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation; the Shannon Director's Award of the National Institutes of Health; the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship; and the Marzio Tremaglia Italiani nel Mondo Award from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Ferrari considers it a great honor that former advisees and trainees of his have gone on to serve on the faculty of distinguished institutions including the University of Texas, the University of California at Berkeley, MIT, Georgetown University, the University of California in San Francisco, the University of Florida, the University of Washington, the Ohio State University, Duke University, Boston University and the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Description of Research Projects. Dr. Ferrari’s group employs methods of semiconductor nanotechnology and mathematical modeling to develop solutions to problems in molecular medicine, with particular interest in applications in oncology and cardiology. He is regarded a pioneer of the fields of BioMEMS, biomedical nanotechnology, and multi-scale mathematics. Among his many ‘firsts’ are: silicon-based nanochannel technology, with its applications to controlled release drug delivery and immunoprotected cell transplantation; multistage particulates for drug delivery; the rational design of nanovectors; and  nanotextured chips for the selective enrichment of the plasma peptidome for early detection of pathological states. His group is actively developing these research directions, and adding more applications and fundamental explorations with regularity. Dr. Ferrari is extremely grateful to the many outstanding scientists he had the privilege of collaborating with, and to his many exceptional students and trainees for their invaluable role in all of the research accomplishments cited in these pages.

 

Ming-Cheng "Mark" Cheng, Ph.D.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

Education

BS, Electrical Engineering, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan 1995

PhD, Electrical Engineering, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan 2003

Postdoc, Comprehensive Cancer Center, Internal Medicine, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH 2003-2006

 

Summary
Dr. Cheng joined Center for Nanomedicine, the Institute of Molecular Medicine, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston as Research Assistant Professor in 2006. Dr. Cheng is an experts on silicon nanotechnology. His role involves design, fabrication and characterization of nanoparticles and nanodevices for drug delivery and proteomic analysis.

From 2003-2006, he was in Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Ohio State University (OSU). In OSU, he led a pilot project entitled” Nanotechnology Against Cancer” funded by National Cancer Institute (NCI). The project is to develop nanotechnology platform for early diagnose and treatment of cancer, with collaboration with a multidisciplinary team. The projects include proteomic chip for analysis of low molecular weight biomarker in biological fluids and long-term anticancer drug delivery using silicon-base implant. Prior joining OSU, he spent two years in Physics Department, Georgetown University, working on Bioflip project, funded by DARPA. He developed a new integrated polymer patch for glucose sampling and detection, and the devices were successful tested in animals.  Dr. Cheng was trained electrical engineering, and has devoted in biomedical research since he was a graduate student.

 

Xuewu Liui, Ph.D.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

 

Takemi Tanaka, Ph.D.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR