People

Federica Castellani (fcastell at odu dot edu )

Federica Castellani received her bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering and her master's degree in Bionanotechnology Engineering from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 2015. Currently she is a Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering at Old Dominion University, Norfolk (VA) and is doing her research on molecular dynamics simulations of ion transport through electroporated phospholipid bilayers at the Frank Reidy Research Center for Bioelectrics (Old Dominion University), at Prof. P. Thomas Vernier laboratory. Her research interests include electroporation and drug delivery.

Helen Dekker

Helen was a senior in Norview High School when she volunteered in our laboratory. She graduated salutatorian in June 2016. Helen is continuing at Virginia Tech Engineering program as of Fall 2017. Her interests are robotics, biology, computer science, and photography.

Esin B. Sözer (esozer at odu dot edu )

Esin received her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering-electrophysics from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles focusing on plasma physics. She was a postdoctoral scholar in physics at the University of California Los Angeles studying accelerator physics before joining the Frank Reidy Research Center for Bioelectrics in 2014. Her current research interest are membrane biophysics under electrical stress, electrical modulation of biological processes, and electrostimulation .

P. Thomas Vernier (pvernier at odu dot edu )

P. Thomas Vernier is Research Professor at the Frank Reidy Research Center for Bioelectrics at Old Dominion University. His research and industrial experience includes ultraviolet microscopy analysis of S-adenosylmethionine metabolism in a psychrophilic strain of the yeast Rhodotorula glutinis, molecular biology of the temperature-sensitive host restriction of bacterial viruses in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, low-level environmental gas monitoring, wide-band instrumentation data recording, physical and electrical characterization and modeling of semiconductor and microelectromechanical devices, and the integration of cellular and biomolecular sensors, carbon nanotubes, and quantum dots with commercial integrated electronic circuit fabrication processes. He currently concentrates on the effects of electric fields on biological systems, with applications in cancer therapeutics, combining experimental observations with molecular dynamics simulations. His focus is on understanding the biophysical mechanisms that govern electric field-driven, nondestructive perturbations of biological membranes. Vernier received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2004.