Dr. Leary joined Purdue this year with a joint appointment in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and the School of Veterinary Medicine's Department of Basic Medical Sciences. In addition to his roles as a faculty member, he will also be involved in the Birck Nanotechnology Center, Oncological Sciences Center, and the Bindley Bioscience Center at Purdue's Discovery Park, as well as the Purdue Cancer Center.

Dr. Leary received two bachelor's degrees in 1970 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in aeronautics-astronautics and philosophy-history. In 1974 he received a master's degree in physics from the University of New Hampshire. He earned his doctorate in biophysics in 1977 from Pennsylvania State University.

His research interests include engineering of new high-throughput cell separation technologies; microgenomics and cell/tissue engineering of adult human stem cells; and engineering of integrated, "smart" bionanosystems for nanomedicine. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for more than 20 years. He is the holder of five U.S. patents with three more pending. Under NASA funding, he has been the lead scientist in a multidisciplinary tem developing nanomedicine for astronauts on longer term space journeys.