Samuel Sia's Biography

Samuel Sia, Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University

Samuel K. Sia is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. His lab focuses on using microfluidics for global health diagnostics and for 3D tissue biology. He obtained his B.S. in Biochemistry at the University of Alberta, Ph.D. in Biophysics at Harvard University, and postdoctoral fellowship in Chemistry at Harvard University. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellow, National Science and Engineering Council of Canada Predoctoral Fellow, and Canadian Institute of Health Postdoctoral Fellow. Since 2005, he has been a faculty member of Columbia University's Biomedical Engineering department. His lab's work has been supported by the NIH (NHLBI and NINR), NSF, USAID/Grand Challenges Canada/Gates Foundation, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, American Heart Association, and World Health Organization. He was named one of the world's top young innovators by MIT Technology Review (2010), and is an elected fellow of AIMBE (American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering). His research has been covered by NPR, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, BBC, CBC, Voice of America, and Agence France Presse. He is a founder of Claros Diagnostics, a venture capital-backed company developing diagnostics products which was acquired by Opko Health, and Harlem Biospace, New York City's first life-science incubator.