Dr. Cagri Savran
Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dr. Cagri Savran has accepted an offer to join our faculty through the Nanotechnology Cluster. He will be Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering with courtesy appointments in Biomedical Engineering and in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research area is BioMEMS/bionanotechnology, specifically detection of proteins and small molecules using novel micromachined mechanical sensors and engineered receptor molecules. His research area builds on current strengths in the School while positioning us to contribute in a growing area of systems biology. Cagri will be affiliated with the Mechanics and Systems, Measurements and Control areas in ME. Dr. Savran received the BSME with Highest Distinction from Purdue in 1999, and then joined MIT to pursue the MS in the area of active control of structures using collocated piezoelectric sensors and actuators. He has also had assignments at Proctor & Gamble and NASA. After receiving the MS in 2000, he followed with a PhD in 2004 for work on a microfabricated biosensor for protein detection. At Purdue Prof. Savran will continue his work with the technique, which involves functionalizing microcantilevers with aptamers (single-stranded DNA or RNA molecules) to create mechanical biosensors. He will also investigate various micromachined sensing techniques that enable packaged biosensors for point-of-care diagnostics.