Director
NCI Office of Cancer Nanotechnology Research
Dr. Piotr Grodzinski is Director of the Nanotechnology for Cancer programs at NCI. He coordinates program and research activities of the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer which has received dedicated NCI funds (2004–present). These funds have supported the formation of multiple interdisciplinary centers, as well as individual research and training programs, targeting nanotechnology solutions for improved prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer.
Dr. Grodzinski is a materials scientist by training, but found bio- and nanotechnology fascinating. In the mid-nineties, he left the world of semiconductor research and built a large microfluidics program at Motorola Corporate Research & Development in Arizona. The group made important contributions to the development of integrated microfluidics for genetic sample preparation with its work being featured in Chemical & Engineering News and Nature Reviews. After his tenure at Motorola, Dr. Grodzinski joined the Bioscience Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory where he served as a Group Leader and an interim Chief Scientist for the Department of Energy's Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT).
Dr. Grodzinski received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles in 1992. He is an inventor on 15 patents and has authored over 100 technical publications and conference presentations.
Dr. Grodzinski has been an invited speaker and has served on the committees of numerous bio- and nano-Micro-Electromechanical Systems conferences.
Acting Director
Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E)
Dr. Eric A. Rohlfing serves as Acting Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), responsible for oversight of the agency. Dr. Rohlfing also serves as Deputy Director for Technology, in which he oversees all technology issues relating to ARPA-E’s programs.
Rohlfing joined ARPA-E from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, where he most recently served as Director of the Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES). As Director, Rohlfing provided leadership and direction in establishing vision, strategic plans, goals, and objectives for the research activities supported by the Division. He joined BES in 1997 and later served as program manager for the Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences program (2000-2003) and team leader for Fundamental Interactions (2003-2006) before becoming Director.
Rohlfing held postdoctoral appointments at Exxon Research and Engineering Company and Los Alamos National Laboratory before joining the staff at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratories in 1986. His research interests include the experimental characterization of transient molecules relevant to combustion processes, linear and nonlinear laser spectroscopies, trace detection of pollutants, molecular beam and mass spectrometric studies of carbon and metal clusters, and vibrational relaxation dynamics. He is the author of approximately 50 peer-reviewed articles, holds membership in the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Rohlfing received a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of Virginia in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Princeton University in 1982.
Dr. Wei Gao (J. Wang group)
Wei Gao is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Department of Nanoengineering at University of California, San Diego in 2014 as a Jacobs Fellow and HHMI International Student Research Fellow. He is a recipient of 2016 MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35 (TR35) and 2015 ACS Young Investigator Award (Division of Inorganic Chemistry). His research interests include wearable biosensors, flexible electronics, BioMEMS, internet of things, micro/nanorobotics, nanomotors, and nanomedicine.
Dr. Joshua Windmiller (J. Wang group)
Dr. Joshua Windmiller is an internationally-recognized expert in printed biosensor technology. His Ph.D. research, funded by a Powell Foundation fellowship, focused on the development of printed biosensors, bioelectronics, and biofuel cells. He has published over 50 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings and has eleven US patents issued or pending. Dr. Windmiller, a Gordon Fellow, NIH SHIFT awardee, and two-time NIH Lab-to-Marketplace awardee is the recipient of the Printed Electronics USA 2010 Academic R&D award for his developments in textile-based printed bioelectronics. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory for NanoBioElectronics at UCSD in 2013, where he was supported by the von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and led a commercialization grant sponsored by the DOE. For his successful product development activities leading to the commercialization of novel printed bioelectronic paradigms, he received the Printed Electronics USA 2014 Product Development award. He currently serves as the CTO of Biolinq, a startup that he co-founded devoted to the development of the novel biosensing modalities he has invented for application in the personal wellness and healthcare domains.\
Dr. Aliaksandr Zaretski (D. Lipomi group)
Aliaksandr (Alex) Zaretski is an engineer who loves figuring out how the world works and the ways to interact with it (including on a VERY small scale). Upon receiving his B.S. degree in biomedical engineering, during the pursuit of which Alex contracted the nanomaterials fever, he was admitted to the Nanoengineering program at UCSD for the graduate studies. Dr. Zaretski receives his PhD in June 2016 after defending his dissertation on “Scalable fabrication techniques of graphene and graphene nano-composite materials for sensing and flexible electronics applications.” Prior to his defense, Alex started GrollTex Inc., a company spun out of the technologies he had developed at UCSD. Currently GrollTex is located in Scripps Ranch, San Diego, and is ramping up the production of large-area sinlge-layer graphene for a multitude of applications. Being a UCSD alum, GrollTex CTO is committed to hiring UCSD graduates, licensing UCSD technologies, and collaborating with the university researchers on the development of 21st century technologies (warp drive excluded).
Dr. Steve McCloskey