The Team
“Never doubt that a small group of committed ordinary people can do extraordinary things and change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead (AnthropologisT)
Joseph Adamson (Elect. & Comp. Eng.)
Joe received a BS in Robotics Engineering (2018) at UCSC, and is continuing on to pursue an MS in Computer Engineering with an emphasis in robotics and control in UCSC. He is currently developing a software suite to automatize and wirelessly control a nanofluidic sensing platform. Utilizing both embedded and mobile programming, he is applying his robotics experience to the project in order to facilitate simple and automatic operation.
Sierra Jade Catelani (Elect. & Comp. Eng.)
Sierra Catelani received her B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at UC Santa Cruz (2016). She completed her M.Sc. in EE at UC Santa Cruz (2017) while advised by Professor Ahmet A. Yanik, where she focused on developing piezoelectric phononic crystal devices for SAW manipulation. Her research topics included phononic crystal design and SAW microfluidics for Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) applications, working on integrating the two technologies to create novel LOC processes.
Jose Fuentes (Elect. & Comp. Eng.)
Jose received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of California Santa Cruz (2018) and is now continuing with his M.S. in ECE with a concentration in Photonics and Electronic Devices at UCSC. His research focuses on the fabrication and characterization of nano-fluidic devices as well as BioNEMS technologies for life sciences and point-of-care-diagnostics.
Ahsan Habib (Elect. & Comp. Eng.)
Ahsan received his B.S. and M.S. in Applied Physics, Electronics, and Communication Engineering (2010 and 2012) from the University of Dhaka, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in ECE Department at UCSC where he is developing electrochemically tunable plasmonic devices. His research also involves novel graphene devices for solar energy harvesting and hydrogen production. He received Baskin School of Engineering, Dissertation-Year Fellowship (2019-20), Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in 2018, and the Chancellor’s Fellowship in 2015.
Yixiang (Louis) Li (Elect. & Comp. Eng.)
Yixiang received his B.Sc. (2012) and M.Sc. (2015) from Wuhan University in Physics and now pursuing his PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering at UCSC. His research is currently focused on the fabrication and characterization of surface acoustic wave(SAW) devices, microfluidics systems, and its applications. He is presently working on multifunctional SAW device by incorporating phononic crystal into microfluidic systems.
Maverick McLanahan (Physics)
Maverick received his B.S. and M.S. in Physics from WWU (2015) and UCSC (2018) respectively. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D in Physics at UCSC. His research focuses on fabrication and characterization of phononic metamaterials for acousto-fluidics, surface plasmon resonance devices and uses of novel biophotonic sensors for electrophysiological applications.
Mustafa Mutlu (Elect. & Comp. Eng.)
Mustafa received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering (2014) from Hacettepe University, Turkey and his MSc. degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from UCSC (2019) . He worked for 3 years as an optics and network engineer before starting his graduate studies and joining Prof. Yanik’s NanoEngineering Research Group. His research interests are phononic crystals, microfabrication and instrumentation of BioMEMS devices, microfluidic systems, and their integration and applications. He is currently pursuing his PhD degree at UCSC Electrical & Computer Engineering Department.
Prof. A. Ali Yanik (Elect. & Comp. Eng.)
Ali received his Ph.D. degree in theoretical physics from Purdue University, under the supervision of Prof. Supriyo Datta (2007). During his PhD, he studied spin dependent electron transport in low dimensional molecular/nano-electronic devices and developed one of the most advanced quantum transport formalisms (spin-NEGF) that exist today. Before joining to UCSC, he was a postdoctoral fellow at NIH BioMEMS Center at Harvard University Medical School and the Department of Surgery in Massachusetts General Hospital under the supervision of Prof. Mehmet Toner. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Laboratory of Integrated Nanophotonics and Biosensing Systems (Hatice Altug Lab) at The Photonics Center, Boston University. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2019.
PhD. Xiangchao (Jude) Zhu (Elect. & Comp. Eng.)
Xiangchao received his B.S. (2012) from Northwestern Polytechnical University in Physics and his M.S. (2014) in ECE from Auburn University. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering at UCSC. His current research focuses on developing and validating a novel point-of-care and portable diagnostics platform for ultrasensitive detection of infectious diseases, developing an microfluidic integrated surface acoustic wave (SAW) platforms for rare cell isolation purposes, and merging phononic metamaterials and acoustofluidics for the development of lab-on-chip technologies. He is a recipient of the UCSC Chancellor's Dissertation-Year Fellowship (2018-19).