Award Winners

Dr. Demircan Canadinc received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005.

Following post-doctorate appointments at the University of Paderborn in Germany and the University of Illinois, he joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at Koc University in, where he is currently working as a full professor. Dr. Canadinc's research focuses on the numerical and experimental characterization of metallic materials, and alloy design for structural, aerospace, and biomedical applications. His research in these areas has led to more than 100 scientific articles and an international patent. Within the recent years, he has adapted the artificial intelligence techniques to metallurgical problems, focusing on the design of refractory high-entropy alloys and high-temperature shape memory alloys. Dr. Canadinc has also owned and operated a Texas-based scientific consulting company serving industry since 2017. Based on his scholarly activities in the broad field of mechanics of materials, Dr. Canadinc was awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany in October 2022.

Ashutosh Chilkoti is the Alan L. Kaganov Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University.

His areas of research include genetically encoded biomaterials and the development of synthetic biomolecular condensates for synthetic biology. He has published ~350 papers, has been cited ~45,000 times, has a Google Scholar H-index of 112, and has 40 patents and 60 patent applications in process. Prof. Chilkoti was awarded the Clemson Award for Contributions to the Literature by the Society for Biomaterials in 2011, the Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lecture award by the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2013, was elected to the National Academy of Inventors in 2014, received the Distinguished Alumni award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 2015, and the Diamond award from the College of Engineering at the University of Washington in 2017. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the founder of six start-up companies: (1) PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, a publicly traded company on NASDAQ (sticker: PHAS) that is taking drug delivery technology that he developed into clinical trials; (2) Sentilus, a clinical diagnostics company that was acquired by Immucor in 2014; (3) BioStealth, a spinoff of Sentilus; (4) GatewayBio, that is commercializing a next-generation PEGylation technology for biologics; (5) Isolere Bio that is developing a non-chromatographic technology for purification of biologics; and (6) inSoma Bio that is developing a recombinant protein matrix for tissue reconstruction.

Kevin E. Healy, Ph.D. is the Jan Fandrianto and Selfia Halim Distinguished Professor in Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in the Departments of Bioengineering, and Materials Science and Engineering.

He is a thought leader and innovator working at the interface between stem cells and materials science to develop dynamic engineered systems to explore both fundamental biological phenomena and new applications in translational medicine. His group currently conducts research in the areas of bioinspired stem cell microenvironments to control stem cell lineage specification and self-organisation into microtissues or organoids; bioinspired systems for regenerative medicine; biological interfaces; and, micro physiological systems for drug development, gene editing, and drug toxicity screening. Professor Healy is an elected Fellow of AIMBE, AAAS, FBSE, BMES, and has received an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Award. He is a named inventor on numerous issued United States and international patents relating to biomaterials, therapeutics, stem cells, and medical devices, and has founded several companies to develop these systems for applications in biotechnology and regenerative medicine.

Dr. Karabi Biswas is a full professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India.

She has developed a new circuit element named as fractional-order-capacitor with tuneable parameters. The work has motivated researchers across the world to fabricate fractional-order-capacitor by modulating the dielectric property of the material. The work has opened the door to validate the 300 years old-concept of mathematics called “fractional-calculus”. She has also indigenously developed several instruments for precision-agriculture and point-of-care health monitoring. She has received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award in 2021. Presently she is serving as an editor for the journals “IEEE Sensors” and “International Journal of Circuit Theory and Application”. She has more than 95000 article reads in ResearchGate and citations in Google Scholar is 2813.

Katja Loos is Professor at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials of the University of Groningen, holding the chair of Macromolecular Chemistry and New Polymeric Materials.

She currently serves as the President of the European Polymer Federation for the period of 2023 to 2025. She specialized in Organic Chemistry and Polymer Chemistry during her university studies at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, USA. She moved into the field of Enzymatic Polymerizations during her doctoral research at the University of Bayreuth, Germany and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brasil. After a postdoctoral research stay at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY, USA, she started an independent research group at the University of Groningen.
Katja Loos pioneered the field of enzymatic polymerization, especially the biocatalytic synthesis of polysaccharides and polyamides, and the synthesis and self-assembly of PVDF containing block copolymers. Already early in her career Katja Loos was awarded two travel scholarships of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and she received the very prestigious Feodor Lynen Fellowship award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct her postdoctoral research. During her independent research career, on the basis of her unique approach in combining modern polymer synthesis, (macro) molecular self-assembly, and utilization of the arising structures the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded her the prestigious VIDI grant in 2009 and VICI grant in 2014 and the German Research Council (DFG) the Eleonore Trefftz guest professorship within the scope of its excellency initiative. Among others, she was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the IUPAC Distinguished Women in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Award and the Team Science Award of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). In 2023, she received the title of Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
Katja Loos is a Fellow of the Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).

Karol Miller is a Winthrop Professor of Applied Mechanics at The University of Western Australia and until recently has been a Visiting Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School.

Karol was born and educated in Warsaw. He has MSc in aerospace engineering, PhD in robotics and DSc in biomechanics. In 2002, Karol established the Intelligent Systems for Medicine Laboratory. ISML’s mission is to work towards improving clinical outcomes through development and appropriate use of technology. The overall objective of Karol’s research is to help creating methods and tools, which will enable a new exciting era of personalised medicine based on scientific computations. He is best known for his work on biomechanics of the brain and vascular system. Karol’s research and teaching have been recognised by multiple awards, including the Humboldt Research Award, NVIDIA GPU Computing Champion Award, the Simulation Industry Association Australia Award, the Sir Charles Julius Medal, the Polish Prime Minister Award and the UWA Student Guild Choice Award.

Dr. Milica Radisic is a Professor at the University of Toronto, Tier I Canada Research Chair in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering and a Senior Scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute.

She is an Executive Editor of ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, the Director of the NSERC CREATE Training Program in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering and Entrepreneurship and a co-Founder of the Centre for Research and Applications of Fluidic Technologies at the University of Toronto and a scientific lead of the Human Organ Mimicry Lab. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada-Academy of Science, Canadian Academy of Engineering, AIMBE, TERMIS and BMES. Her research focuses on structure-function relationships in organ engineering, biophysical modulation of tissues and development of new biomaterials that promote healing and attenuate scarring. She developed new methods to mature iPSC derived cardiac tissues using electrical stimulation. Her research findings were presented in over 260 publications with h-index of 71 and over 21,000 citations in journals such as Cell, Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, Nature Methods etc. She is a co-founder of two companies: TARA Biosystems, that uses human engineered heart tissues in drug development and safety testing (acquired by Valo Health), and Quthero that advances regenerative hydrogels.