James McGrath's Biography

James McGrath, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, University of Rochester

Professor McGrath holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State (BS) and MIT (MS) and earned a PhD in Biological Engineering from Harvard/MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology in 1998. He then trained as a Distinguished Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University. Since 2001, Professor McGrath has been on the Biomedical Engineering faculty at the University of Rochester (UR). He leads the Nanomembrane Research Group (NRG), a highly interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team that includes industry and academia. Professor McGrath is a co-founder, current director, and past president of SiMPore Inc., a company founded in 2007 to commercially manufacture silicon nanomembranes. In 2015 Professor McGrath was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He was awarded the Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award from the School of Engineering in 2019 and was named a Dean's Professor of Arts Sciences and Engineering in 2022. He has 12 issued and pending patents and more than 100 scientific publications.

The Benefits of Being Thin: How Ultrathin Silicon Membranes are Enabling New Technologies for Discovery in Biomedical Research

Tuesday, 13 December 2022 at 17:30

Add to Calendar ▼2022-12-13 17:30:002022-12-13 18:30:00Europe/LondonThe Benefits of Being Thin: How Ultrathin Silicon Membranes are Enabling New Technologies for Discovery in Biomedical ResearchExtracellular Vesicles 2022: Technologies Driving Biological Investigations in Long Beach, CaliforniaLong Beach, CaliforniaSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

A decade-and-a-half after we first used silicon microfabrication to create free-standing ultrathin nanoporous membranes, the materials are being utilized by a growing number of laboratories as uniquely capable tools for biomedical research. Today we manufacture a variety of silicon-based nanoporous and microporous membranes with the common characteristics that they are ultrathin (15 nm - 300 nm) with well-defined pore sizes. The extremes thinness of 'nanomembranes' makes them orders-of-magnitude more permeable to both diffusing molecules and pressurized flow than conventional membranes. The ultrathin nature of the membranes also gives them a glass-like imaging quality in optical microscopy. These properties provide abundant opportunities for novel membrane-based devices and assays. This talk will provide an overview of two leading applications of our nanomembranes. First is their use to create in vitro models of human tissue (i.e. 'tissue chips' or 'microphysiological systems' where they provide optically transparent and highly permeable scaffolds to compartmentalize tissues including the brain neurovascular unit, the blood-retinal-barrier, bone, and tendon. The second application I will cover is the use of as tool for diagnostic applications. Here we have leveraged our understanding of filtration to develop a digital assay of extracellular vesicle biomarkers and pressure-based sensor that detects virus in a point-of-care microdevice.

Add to Calendar ▼2022-12-12 00:00:002022-12-14 00:00:00Europe/LondonExtracellular Vesicles 2022: Technologies Driving Biological InvestigationsExtracellular Vesicles 2022: Technologies Driving Biological Investigations in Long Beach, CaliforniaLong Beach, CaliforniaSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

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