John T McDevitt's Biography

John T McDevitt, Professor, Division of Biomaterials, New York University College of Dentistry Bioengineering Institute

John T. McDevitt now serves as a Full Professor within the Division of Biomaterials within the Department of Molecular Pathobiology at New York University, is a member of NYU’s Bioengineering Institute and participates as a distinguished faculty member in the NYU Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering within the Tandon School of Engineering at NYU. Prior to this time, McDevitt served as the Chair of the Department of Biomaterials at NYU, the Brown-Weiss Professor of Bioengineering/Chemistry at Rice University, the Director of the Gulf Coast Consortium on early Disease Detection within the Texas Medical Center and a Full Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at University of Texas at Austin. McDevitt completed his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Stanford University.

Professor McDevitt is a pioneer in the development of ‘programmable bio-nano-chip’ technologies. He has a strong track record of translating essential bioscience, artificial intelligence and medical microdevice discoveries into real-world clinical practice. In this capacity, he has served as the Scientific Founder for a number of diagnostic and clinical services companies including OraLiva which features smart diagnostics for early disease detection as well as SensoDx which develops and monetizes programmable diagnostic hardware. McDevitt and his team have raised over $45M in Federal and Foundation support for academic efforts and over $50M to support commercial diagnostic activities. McDevitt and his team have process over 100 patent and patent applications. His recent research has been sponsored by major programs funded by National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at NIH, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), Renaissance Health Service Corporation (Delta Dental of MI), the Army and the United Kingdom’s Home Office Scientific Development Branch.

McDevitt and his team have written more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and have contributed. This work was recognized with the “2020 People’s Choice Award for the TOPx COVID-19 initiative”, “2016 AACC Wallace H. Coulter Lectureship Award,” “Best of What's New Award” in the Medical Device Category by Popular Science as well as for the “Best Scientific Advances Award” by the Science Coalition. Dr. McDevitt’s individual honors include the Presidential Young Investigator Award, the California Polytechnic Distinguished Alumni Award and the Exxon Education Award. Over the past years, Dr. McDevitt has served as the Principal Investigator for 6 major clinical trials and 2 clinical pilot studies, all involving the programmable bio-nano-chip. Through these clinical efforts, mini-sensor ensembles are being developed for major diseases in the areas of COVID-19 disease severity, oral cancer, cardiac heart disease, trauma, drugs of abuse, ovarian cancer and prostate cancer.