Research & partnerships

Research at Mohsen Akbari’s laboratory lies at the interface of cellular biology, biomaterials and mechanical engineering. He is particularly interested in combining the fundamentals of fluid, mass and thermal transport in microscales with cellular biology and biomaterials to address current grand challenges in global health.

Three key research areas at Dr. Akbari's lab are:

• biofabrication of engineered tissue substitutes for regenerative medicine using fiber-based technologies and bioprinting
• development of biomimetic tissue models (aka organs-on-chip) using microengineering techniques for disease modeling and drug discovery applications
• development of cell-based microarray platforms for high-throughput drug screening

Dr. Akbari has several peer-reviewed articles in high impact journals such as Biotechnology Advances, Advanced Materials, Advanced Healthcare Materials and Microfluidics and Nanofluidics.

He is the recipient of several institutional, national and international awards such as the British Columbia Innovation award, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) postdoctoral fellowship and the Kaisar Foundation award.

He has been recognized as a Canadian rising star in global health for his idea in the development of a low-cost thermal cycler for the detection of tuberculosis in low-income countries. For more info about Dr. Akbari's research, visit his LiME lab website.

Alexandra Branzan Albu’s research involves medical image analysis for computer-aided diagnostic and therapy planning. She has several ongoing collaborations on biomedical research projects. She is a qualified health researcher affiliated with the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health at the University of Victoria.

Dr. Branzan Albu developed research partnerships with the British Columbia Cancer Agency and the Institut de Recherche en Geriatrie at Université de Montreal. Her medical imaging research is published in reputable venues, such as the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, the International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI) and the International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC).

Dr. Branzan Albu developed a course in Medical Image Processing (ELEC 435). This course plays an important role in the biomedical option offered in the Electrical Engineering program.

Dr. Constantinescu’s research expertise is in the area of haptics. Haptics refers to robotic technologies that enable users to touch and feel computer-generated objects.

Her current work focuses on enabling multiple users, connected across a computer network, to touch, feel and manipulate a shared virtual environment together. The goal of this work is to extend the sense of touch across distance, similarly to how existing video conferencing technologies extend vision across distance.

Applications of this work include home-based and tele-rehabilitation as well as virtual reality-based surgical training. In prior research, she investigated the development of virtual constraints for robot-assisted surgical procedures.

Dr. Dechev's research program involves biomedical system design with application areas centered around the design of advanced hand prostheses. These areas include:

• 3D printing of hand prostheses
• sensor design for acquisition of bio-signals from the lower arm
• wireless power transfer technology for implantable sensors for the measurement of intra-muscular signals (electromyographic)
• ultrasound imaging and ultrasound-based sensory systems for the measurement of internal tendon motion within the arm and wrist

These projects are aimed at developing better methods for the acquisition of bio-signals for the control of advanced hand prostheses.

Dr. Dechev has a research program in developing mechatronic systems and robotic automation systems for cell-based research. Projects include instrumentation for the automatic visual analysis and manipulation of cells in vitro and magnetic-based chips for the capture and sorting of magnetically tagged cells in vitro.

Victoria Hand Project

The Victoria Hand Project, founded by UVic engineers, creates accessible 3D-printed prosthetic hands for amputees. Working with partners around the world, VHP builds local 3D-printing centres, trains staff and supports community-based prosthetic care.

Christopher Dennison's research is in biomechanics and biomedical instrumentation. It focuses on understanding mechanisms of traumatic injury in contexts spanning civilian life, sports and defence. The application areas for this work are protection devices, including head gear and body armour. His group collaborates with professional sports leagues, protection equipment manufacturers and defence scientists.

Dr. Dennison is active in North American and international standards organizations that focus on engineered testing approaches for protective gear. He is a member of the scientific review committee of the International Research Council on the Biomechanics of Injury. His group applies in vivo, ex vivo, in vitro and in silico approaches.

Xiaodai Dong's research is related to mobile health and applications of communications and computer technologies to healthcare. Her team develops wearable electrocardiograms for long-term heart monitoring and learning based electronic record systems.

Zuomin Dong’s research program includes portable diagnosis device and software for performing on-site assay, assay-based analysis and diagnosis.

Fayez Gebali’s research involves the algorithms, design and programming of embedded devices, including those used in medical and healthcare applications.

This includes a program on assistive technology using cell phones for the visually impaired to access public transit systems and provide a warning to nearby vehicles of the presence of a visually impaired person.

Josh Giles’s research focuses on 2 complementary areas:

• biomechanical experimentation and simulation seeking to improve our understanding of basic human musculoskeletal biomechanics and to address important clinical questions
• development of systems to improve orthopaedic clinician training, patient assessment and treatment/surgical planning

Critical applications of this research are the development of biomechanically driven devices for clinician training and quantitative patient assessment, as well as systems that can improve surgical planning through personalized patient functional data and biomechanical modelling.

Dr. Giles is a member of the Canadian Orthopaedic Research Society, the International Society for Technology in Arthroplasty. He is a reviewer for the International Society for Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Research Annual Meeting.

Within UVic’s BME program, Dr. Giles teaches the third-year BME Design course (BME350) and offers a fourth-year elective in Musculoskeletal Biomechanics (MECH450D).

Reuven Gordon works with industrial partners to develop biosensors for early detection of cancers and drug discovery.

Dr. Herring’s biomedical research program includes an acoustic medical imager that can diagnose and treat diseased tissue and monitor the treatment process based on acoustic confocal holography. A new project based on nanotechnology is targeted to treat tumors using powerful antioxidants created by visible light.

Tao Lu’s general research area is biophotonics and nanophotonics. He currently works on molecule and nanoparticle sensing using optical microcavities, which have interesting optical and mechanical behaviours to exploit. He also has research projects on spectroscopy by deep learning.

Research in Peter Oshkai’s Fluid Mechanics laboratory includes biomedical devices: fluid dynamics and design aspects of replacement heart valves.

They are developing a realistic simulation of a human heart capable of reproducing the hydrodynamic characteristics of the blood flow through diseased ventricles and valves.

Poman So’s research and industrial experience is in applied computational electromagnetics and object-oriented software engineering. He is a co-founder of the Faustus Scientific Corporation (Victoria, BC) and the creator of the company’s MEFiSTo line of electromagnetic/bioelectromagnetic modeling software.

Dr. So’s research includes microwave engineering, computer-aided design and modeling of electromagnetic structures, computer simulation of bioelectromagnetic behaviors, and heterogeneous computing algorithms and software for electromagnetics/bioelectromagnetics applications.

Since 2009, Dr. So has been collaborating with the biomedical engineering department at the Vancouver Island Health Authority in developing electronic stethoscopes for e-health and telemedicine.

Afzal Suleman’s research program includes fluid-structure interaction of heart valves and disease.

Sravya Tekumalla holds a PhD in Materials Science from National University of Singapore (NUS), where she developed in-situ and ex-situ techniques for the synthesis of lightweight magnesium nanocomposites.

Following her PhD, she was awarded the prestigious NTU Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship. She worked at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore and Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Dr. Tekumalla’s research focuses on coupling advanced technologies such as additive manufacturing with next-generation metallic materials for structural and functional applications. These materials include lightweight non-toxic biodegradable magnesium-based alloys and composites for temporary implant applications, low modulus titanium alloys as implants that can minimize stress shielding effects, as well as smart biocompatible alloys such as shape memory alloys that can assist with fracture fixation and applications like stents, bone implants and orthodontic devices due to their ability to recover their original shape after deformation.

Research opportunities

Research opportunities for graduate study in these or related areas are available. Motivated candidates with an undergraduate or graduate background in materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing, biomedical engineering or related fields are encouraged to apply. Please email your CV and a short description of your research interests to Dr. Sravya Tekumalla.

Karolina Valente has deep expertise in tissue engineering, 3D bioprinting and oncology. She has been teaching in UVic’s mechanical and biomedical engineering departments since 2015. She is currently an assistant teaching professor.

Karolina teaches BME and MECH courses, including physiology, 3D printing and tissue engineering. She developed the materials science course for biomedical engineering and all lab content for BME200 and BME320. Her teaching interests include materials science, 3D printing, bioprinting, biosensors and microfluidics.

Caterina Valeo’s research expertise is in the area of environmental informatics. Environmental informatics is the field relating to the creation, collection, processing, modelling, interpretation and dissemination of information within the field of environmental sciences.

Some of her current work focuses on using biomaterials (such as oyster shells and certain fungal strains) to reduce the incidence of heavy metals or pathogens in the environment, thereby reducing risks to human health. She also uses spatial statistics and fuzzy mathematics to help decision makers determine the best sampling strategy when assessing or remediating hazardous pollutants in the environment.

Dr. Valeo is also developing sensors to detect biofilm in the environment to quantify phytoremediation (cleansing) capacity of plants in water treatment.

Jens Weber conducts research on engineering of biomedical software systems, in particular clinical information systems. His main interest is in formal and systematic methods for improving the safety, security and interoperability of biomedical software.

He is an affiliate professor at the UBC Faculty of Medicine (Department of Family Practice) and an adjunct professor in the UVic School of Health Information Science. He co-directs a joint research group (Simbioses Lab) with Dr. Morgan Price (Island Medical Program, UBC). He has published extensively in premier venues of health informatics, including JAMIA, AMIA and ACM SIGBIO.

Stephanie Willerth runs an interdisciplinary research program investigating neural tissue engineering treatments for disorders of the central nervous system and training highly qualified personnel.

Her research combines stem cells, tissue engineering, drug delivery, cellular reprogramming and 3D bioprinting. She has been recognized as a leader in the fields of biomaterials and tissue engineering as evidenced by her Tier II Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Engineering, being named a Woman of Innovation in 2017 and a Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering in 2015. She served as the President of the Canadian Biomaterials Society in 2017-18.

Dr. Willerth served as the acting director of the Centre for Biomedical Research at the University of Victoria. Her work in training HQP at the undergraduate level led her to be named the winner of the 2018 REACH award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research-Inspired Teaching, a prestigious university-wide award.

Bosco Yu obtained his PhD at the University of Cambridge with a research focus on structural mechanics. He was a Croucher scholar and a fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, a society for promoting scientific inquiry.

Following a post-doc at the University of Toronto, Dr. Yu worked at McMaster University as an assistant professor. He joined the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Victoria in September 2022.

Dr. Yu's research group, Hybrid 3D, leverages the power of additive manufacturing to develop novel materials with nature-inspired architectures. Taking inspiration from organic and inorganic structures, they seek to create architected materials that are optimized for specific design challenges in a variety of applications.

Many of Dr. Yu's ongoing research projects are related to biomedical applications:

• design of porous surgical implants to enhance bone integration and avoid stress shielding
• geometrical design of bioresorbable stents to reduce the risk of thrombosis
• design of 3D printed crushable materials for injury prevention applications