Biological systems are at the heart of solutions to problems related to the environment, energy, health, food, and sustainability. Biological engineering graduate students use tools, either through computation and modeling or instrumentation and biological and biochemical methods, to create and manipulate cells and cellular materials for a variety of applications relating to human, plant, and animal systems. This emerging field is expected to rapidly advance and open opportunities in biomanufacturing, biosensors, microbiome, biomaterials, human therapeutics, tissue and organ regeneration, computational genomics, high-throughput sequencing algorithms, bioenergy and biofuel production, bioremediation, and biodefense.
Faculty
Somali Chaterji
Associate Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Research Areas
Innovatory for Cells and Neural Machines (ICAN) straddles the domains of digital agriculture (IoT & scalable databases) and computational biology (ML for genomics & cell engineering), both of which use applied machine learning, scalable databases and cloud/edge computing. https://schaterji.io
Kari Clase
Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Research Areas
Biotechnology Innovation and Regulatory Science Center leader, developing global programs to ensure sustainable access to medicines in Africa and advance discovery in manufacturing technology, quality of medicines, and rare disease research.
Abigail Engelberth
Associate Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Environmental & Ecological Engineering
Research Areas
Bioseparations to recover valuable co-products from underutilized biological resources and the design of the recovery processes to assess potential economic feasibility of a given co-product. https://engineering.purdue.edu/ERG
Michael Ladisch
Distinguished Professor of Agricultural & Biological Engineering; Director, Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering
Research Areas
Bioseparations & Mass Transfer: liquid chromatography, membrane separations, microfluidics, injectable biologics. Pathogen Detection. Biocatalysis: enzymes, cellulose pretreatment, fermentation, process engineering. https://www.purdue.edu/lorre/
Martin Okos
Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering/Biochemistry, and Food Process Engineering
Research Areas
Optimization of food, pharmaceutical and bio processes using experimental and computer-aided research. Measurement of rheological, transport and kinetic properties, Design of biological fermentation, extrusion, dehydration and separation systems.
Marshall Porterfield
Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Research Areas
Biosensors. Lab-on-a-chip MEMS devices for cell sensing. Biomimetic sensors for environmental monitoring Bio-nanotechnology. Bioregenerative Life Support. Nutrient delivery systems for use in microgravity.
Caitlin Proctor
Assistant Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Ecological & Environmental Engineering
Research Areas
Microbial ecology of aquatic systems. Improving systems to enhance functionality and protect public health (e.g., in drinking water) by understanding the dynamic ecosystems happening on small scales.
Kurt Ristroph
Assistant Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering | Chemical Engineering (courtesy)
Research Areas
Scalable nanomaterials for medical and agricultural applications. Controlled drug delivery in humans, plants, and animals. Plant bionanotechnology, translational nanomedicine, soft material science, process scale-up, pathogen targeting. http://www.ristrophlab.com
Karthik Sankaranarayanan
Assistant Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Research Areas
Applied data science for enzymology. We develop computational models for enzyme reaction chemistry to make experimentally testable predictions for addressing manufacturing challenges associated with complex synthetic molecules that are important to the society (e.g., pharmaceutical agents, agrochemicals, and food flavoring). https://www.ksankargroup.com/
David Umulis
Dane A. Miller Head and Professor, Biomedical Engineering/Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Research Areas
Systems Biology. Interdisciplinary research: mechanisms of development and regulation of Bone Morphogenetic Proteins. Finite-element modeling of biological systems. Quantitative image analysis, microscopy, and data-driven modeling. https://engineering.purdue.edu/~dumulis
Mohit Verma
Associate Professor, Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Research Areas
Engineering microbiomes. Field-deployable paper-based microfluidic biosensors for animal health and human health, in vitro models for studying host-microbiome interactions, ecological rules of life, soft materials and devices. https://www.vermalab.com
