Providing world-class expertise to the School are:

Ozan Akkus, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, brings expertise on the diagnosis of fracture susceptibility of skeletal tissues in response to aging, osteoporosis, metabolic diseases, disuse, and overuse, and on the molecular level etiology of failure and deformation processes in connective tissues. An NSF CAREER awardee, he earned his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in mechanical and aerospace engineering and most recently served on the faculty at the University of Toledo.

Edward L. Bartlett, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, brings expertise in neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, with an emphasis on auditory systems. His research focuses on understanding how the auditory thalamus controls and shapes the flow of information between the auditory periphery and the auditory cortex in normal and pathological conditions. He earned his B.A. in physics from Haverford College, his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, served a summer fellowship in computational neuroscience at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and served as a Postdoctoral Fellow and as a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins University.

Lynetta Freeman, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Associate Professor of Small Animal Surgery in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, brings extensive experience in the development of surgical procedures and devices. Her research and development experience includes more than 15 years with Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc., finishing as Director of the Bariatric Surgery Innovation Team. Her clinical research interests are in the areas of laparoscopy and thoracoscopy, including exploratory laparoscopy, laparoscopic liver biopsy, laparoscopic ovariohysterectomy, and thoracoscopic procedures. She earned her B.S. in agriculture and D.V.M. degrees at Oklahoma State University, completed a small-animal internship program at Colorado State University, earned a M.S. in veterinary clinical sciences and completed a small-animal surgical residency program at Washington State University, and earned an M.B.A. in business administration from Xavier University.

Michael G. Heinz, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Assistant Professor of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, adds critical expertise in auditory neuroscience. His specific interests include neural coding in normal and impaired auditory systems, neural mechanisms for enhanced speech coding, models of auditory signal processing and perception, psychoacoustics, and neural prostheses. He earned his Sc.B. in electrical engineering from Brown University, his M.S.E. in electrical and computer engineering from the Johns Hopkins University, and his Ph.D. in speech and hearing sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Purdue, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biomedical Engineering Department at the Johns Hopkins University.

Pedro Irazoqui, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, brings significant expertise in the application, design, and fabrication of implantable analog integrated circuits, high-speed RF circuits for wireless data and power coupling to and from biological implants, real-time discrete-time signal processing for biological signals, and neuronal substrates of behavior, perception, and locomotion. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of New Hampshire and his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from UCLA.

James F. Leary, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Basic Medical Sciences, brings renowned expertise in high-throughput and BioMEMS-based cell analysis and separation technologies for genomics and proteomics (cytomics), high-speed imaging/laser ablation/laser opto-injection technologies for stem cell engineering, and nanomedicine approaches to cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, antiviral therapies, and regenerative medicine. He earned an S.B. in aeronautics/astronautics, and also in humanities, from MIT, an M.S. in physics from the University of New Hampshire, a Ph.D. in biophysics from Penn State University, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in cytometry/immunology at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He most recently was on the faculty at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

Kevin Otto, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, brings expertise in brain-machine interfaces, sensation induced by electrical stimulation of neural tissue, sensory repair and augmentation, and neural coding and plasticity. He earned his B.S. in chemical engineering from Colorado State University, and his M.S. and Ph.D in bioengineering from Arizona State University, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute and the University of Michigan.

Alyssa Panitch, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, provides expertise in protein-derived bioactive signals and the manipulation of these signals to develop next-generation biomaterials for regenerative medicine and protein-derived pharmaceuticals. She earned a B.A. in biochemistry from Smith College, a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts, and a Ph.D. in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts, and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in materials and biomedical engineering at the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Both an NSF CAREER and NIH K25 Career awardee, she will join the Purdue faculty this summer from Arizona State University.

Gudrun Schmidt, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, provides extensive experience in polymers, biomaterials, particularly hydrogels for three-dimensional cell growth and smart materials for controlled drug release, through research at the interface of polymer chemistry and physics, as well as nanocomposite materials. Her research focuses on the synthesis, development, and fundamental characterization of new multi-component and nanocomposite materials with hybrid properties. She earned her B.A. in chemistry, and M.S. and Ph.D in macromolecular chemistry from the Albert Ludwigs University of Freibrug, Germany; was a Postdoctoral Associate in a joint program with Lund University (Sweden), Institut Laue Langevin (France), and the University of Freiburg (Germany); was the Alexander von Humboldt/Feodor Lynen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Polymers Division of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. An NSF CAREER awardee, she will join the Purdue faculty this summer from Louisiana State University.