News & Events

The Department of Bioengineering would like to congratulate this year's recipient of the 2023 Leslie A. Geddes Award, Dr. Mahsa Jalali (Supervisor: Prof. Sara Mahshid). Dr. Jalali received this award for her PhD thesis entitled, "On-Chip Plasmonic Nanosurface for Molecular Profiling of Single Extracellular Vesicles in Cancer Liquid Biopsy." (Feb 2024)

We are pleased to announce that Professor Amine Kamen is among nine experts who were recently appointed by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to its Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). Read more here (November 2023)

We are pleased to announce that Prof Caroline Wagner and Prof Sara Mahshid are both winners of the final round of the MI4 Pfizer Early Career Investigator Award. The overarching goal of MI4 is to bring together investigators from across the McGill community and its partners to foster interdisciplinary research. Please join us in congratulating our professors on their successful submissions! Read more here. (September 2023)

A job well done to Professor Dan V. Nicolau, Professor Ayyappasamy Sudalaiyadum Perumal, Serban, Dobroiu, and Shantoshini Dash, for their contribution in an article that reached a cover of the reputed journal ACS Sensors. To read their article, Spatially Addressable Multiplex Biodetection by Calibrated Micro/Nanostructured Surfaces, please click here.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year's BBME Symposium! To view some highlights from the event, please click here. (May 2023)

The Panel of Editors for all IEEE journals, held in Chicago last week, occasioned a gathering of all Canadian Editors in Chief - and McGill is behind and center of all. (May 2023)

Check out this video by Prof Natalie Reznikov and Prof Marc D. McKee on their studies in the field of Biomineralization, using the Zeiss Xradia Versa 3D X-ray microscope. Watch it here. (January 2023)

The Department of BioEng is accepting submissions of original digital artwork for the proceedings of course BIEN 200, also known as The Hyperbook: Nature’s Design Toolbox. The submission period is open from January 1st until April 30th, 2023. This opportunity is open to all McGill students, so please feel free to share. Read more about this opportunity here. (January 2023)

Congrats to our award recipients at this year’s Celebration of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, hosted by McGill Engine. Prof. Sara Mahshid, Prof. Allen Ehrlicher, and Dr. Roozbeh Siavash Moakhar were awarded the William and Rhea Seath Awards in Engineering Innovation, and Prof. Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu was awarded the TechAccelR Grant. Job well done to all for these great achievements! For photos of the event, click here. (December 2022)

Congratulations to Professor Sara Mahshid and Postdoctoral Researcher Roozbeh Siavash on their innovation in COVID and RSV testing, without nasal swabs. Their NFluidEX device offers 100 per cent accuracy in as little as 10 minutes, and can be configured to detect a range of ailments. You can read this article here. (November 2022)

The schedule for the BIEN 200 Symposium for Fall 2022 is now available! Check it out here. (November 2022)

Congratulations to our Teaching Lab Manager, Yulemi Gonzalez Quesada, who recently published two articles in the IJMS journal. They are available to read in PubMed Central here and here (November 2022).

Check out our new Hyperbook, Nature’s Design Toolbox. The curated proceedings illustrate, analyze and systematize the nontrivial and parsimonious biological adaptations in the context of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. Besides being a source of inspiration and creativity, the Hyperbook is intended to help bioengineering applicants and undergraduate students choose their preferred bioengineering stream. Read more here. (November 2022)

Congratulations to Professor Natalie Reznikov who is among the 15 McGill researchers who received a total of $3.9 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund (CFI JELF), for her project on Cryo-SEM/Cryo-FIB/SEM Preparation System. Read this here. (September 2022)

A big congratulations to Professor Natalie Reznikov who is the 2023 Winner of the Award for Innovation in Applied Microscopy for Engineering and Physical Sciences from the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS), for outstanding scientific achievements in applying microscopy in the fields of engineering and physical sciences. Read this here. (September 2022)

Congratulations to McGill iGEM, which features 3 students from our Bioengineering department, on being one of the Top 10 teams at the 2022 Grand Jamboree in Paris! Read this here. (October 2022)

A Research Article titled "A Versatile Biomimic Nano-Templating Fluidic Assay for Multiplex Quantitative Monitoring of Viral Respiratory Infections and Immune Responses in Saliva and Blood" by Roozbeh Siavash Moakhar; Carolina del Real Mata; Mahsa Jalali and supervised by Prof Sara Mahshid was recently published in Advanced Science. This is a collaborative effort supported by CIHR and MI4 in the context of COVID-19 in collaboration with the Department of Medicine at McGill University, Jewish General Hospital (Dr. Chen Liang) and Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Read this here. (October 2022)

Professor Allen Ehrlicher and his lab recently published an article titled "Cell monolayer deformation microscopy reveals mechanical fragility of cell monolayers following EMT" in Biophysical Journal. Read this here. (February 2022)

The Department of Bioengineering will be offering two new courses, BIEN 414 and BIEN 585, in Winter 2022. (December 2021)

Dr. Amine Kamen recently published an article titled " Critical Assessment of Purification and Analytical Technologies for Enveloped Viral Vector and Vaccine Processing and Their Current Limitations in Resolving Co-Expressed Extracellular Vesicles". (July 2021)

Professor Caroline E Wagner joins the Department of Bioengineering. (Aug 2020)

Professor Natalie Reznikov joins the Department of Bioengineering (August 2020).

Professor Codruta Ignea joins the Department of Bioengineering. (August 2020)

It goes without saying that the Department of Bioengineering is immensely proud of its first undergraduate cohort and their graduating students. We hope that you take your perseverance, ambition, and enthusiasm wherever life carries you. Félicitations, parabéns, congratulazioni, felicitari, selamat bertuang, CONGRATULATIONS to you all!! (June 2020)

Prof. Sara Mahshid and Prof. Amine Kamen are featured in the article "From developing a vaccine to creating antiviral materials, six Engineering professors are channeling their research efforts towards the fight against COVID-19". (May 2020)

We are proud to announce that Prof. Amine Kamen’s group will be one of 47 research teams across Canada to receive government funding towards COVID-19 research. On March 6th, we welcomed Honorable Jean-Yves Duclos, President of the Treasury Board, for a tour of Prof. Kamen’s lab.
Read more here. (March 2020)

Our very own Dr. Dan V. Nicolau was recently appointed as the Editor in Chief (EiC) of Transactions on NanoBioscience (TNB). Read more about IEEE's EiC and the transactions in Nanobioscience here (December 2019).

Dr. Xia and his lab published an article on Nature Communications titled "Estimating dispensable content in the human interactome". Read the article here.

(October 2019)

Dr. Nicolau published an article on PNAS titled Intracellular mechanisms of fungal space searching in microenvironments. 
His team's research involved using time-lapse live-cell imaging of Neurospora crassa in microfluidic environments to show how constraining geometries determine the intracellular processes responsible for fungal growth.
Read more about his paper here (September 2019).

Dr. Matt Kinsella recently published a new article on IOP Science titled "Engineering bioprintable alginate/gelatin composite hydrogels with tunable mechanical and cell adhesive properties to modulate tumor spheroid growth kinetics". 

(August 2019)

The Bioengineering team went international! Professors Georgios Mitsis and Dan Nicolau took off to Berlin with Departmental Manager Antonella Fratino and Lab Manager Xavier Elisseff to attend the 41st International Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference.
(July 2019)

Graduate student Jaqueline Kort Mascourt was awarded a second place prize for her recent poster presentation at the annual Canadian Biomaterials Society meeting in Quebec City (May 2019). 

Tao Jiang, a doctoral graduate of the Kinsella lab, and fellow labmates have recently published a review article in Applied Physics Reviews covering the physical mechanisms controlling extrusion bioprinting and development of bioprinted tissue models. The article has been selected by the editor as a featured article and will be showcased in an upcoming special issue of APR focused on the physical and chemical mechanisms of bioprinting.
(March 2019)

Jacqueline Kort-Mascort, a doctoral student in the Kinsella lab, has co-authored a paper with colleagues and collaborators from the Faculty of Dentistry including lead author Alaa Mansour and Prof. Simon Tran and Prof. Faleh Tamimi in the journal Acta Biomaterialia. The team extracted extracellular matrix components from bone as an extract that was shown to modulate the immune response of bioceramics and enhance bone regeneration in vivo. Jackie helped develop a gel that would enable sustained localized release of the extracts at the site of insult.
(March 2019)

Dr. Sara Mahshid was one of fifteen McGill researchers to receive grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Quebec Government.

11th Annual Hands-on Workshop in 3D-Printing & Microfluids for Bioengineering

May 8-10, 2019 | Registration Deadline: May 3rd, 2019

Dr. Sebastian Wachsmann-Hogiu recently published an article with his lab members Sara Kheireddine, Ayyappasamy Sudalaiyadum Perumal, and Zachary J. Smith, along with chair and professor Dr. Dan V. Nicolau. Their article, "Dual-phone illumination-imaging system for high resolution and large field of view multi-modal microscopy", was published in the journal Lab on a Chip, and presents the first time a system comprised of two mobile phones, one for illumination and the other for microscopy, as a portable, user-friendly, and cost-effective microscopy platform for a wide range of applications. (February 2019)

Professors Dan Nicolau and Sebastian Wacshmann-Hogiu attended the SPIE Photonics West 2019 conference in San Francisco from February 3rd - February 6th. Dr. Nicolau - who also chaired the event - presented the Prizmatix Young Investigator Award to the best paper at the conference. (February 2019). 

Professor Dan Nicolau and his lab have recently had 2 papers published online. The first, Fluorescence Interference Contrast-enabled structures improve the microarrays performance, was published in Elsevier’s Biosensors and Bioelectronics journal. The second, Something has to give: scaling combinatorial computing by biological agents exploring physical networks encoding NP-complete problems, can be found in Interface Focus through The Royal Society’s publishing. (October 2018)

The Department of Bioengineering will be exhibiting at the Biomedical Engineering Society’s 50^th Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia from October 17 – 21, 2018. Swing by booth #319 to meet McGill University’s Bioengineering crew! (October 2018)

The Department of Bioengineering is proud to be the first department at McGill to gain silver certification by the Office of Sustainability’s Sustainable Workplace Certification. The program is part of McGill’s Vision 2020 Climate & Sustainability Action Plan, which aims to improve the university’s environmental and socio-economic impact. If you’d like to get involved and make a difference on campus, check out the Office of Sustainability’s website. (July 2018)

Prof. J. Matt Kinsella and members of his lab have been featured in a video article in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). Their article, Bioprintable Alginate/Gelatin Hydrogel 3D In Vitro Model Systems Induce Cell Spheroid Formation, can also be read on their website. (July 2018)

We are pleased to announce that three of our professors have been promoted by McGill’s Board of Governors this summer. Professor Allen Ehrlicher and Professor J. Matt Kinsella have been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, and Professor Yu (Brandon) Xia to the rank of Full Professor. Congratulations! (July 2018)

Professor Amine A. Kamen will be co-chairning the upcoming Vaccine Technology VII conference presented by Engineering Conferences International (ECI). This year, the conference will take place at Mont-Tremblant from June 17 - 22. (June 2018)

On April 23, 2018, the Department celebrated the grand opening of their new office space located in MC 350. A special thank you to our distinguished guest, McGill alumna Marika Roy, whose contribution established the Department of Bioengineering. (April 2018)

Professor Sara Mahshid’s paper, Transverse dielectrophoretic-based DNA nanoscale confinement, was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. (April 2018)

Tao Jiang, a third year Ph.D. student in Prof. Matt Kinsella’s lab, presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for Biomaterials in Atlanta, Georgia. Check out the program for details on his talk: “lginate/Gelatin as a Bioprinting Ink to Tailor Tumor Spheroid Formation.” (April 2018)

The Department of Bioengineering is proud to announce it has been awarded bronze by The Sustainable Workplace Certification Program. It is the first unit in the Faculty of Engineering and one of the first units at McGill to be participating in the program, as part of Vision 2020 Climate & Sustainability Action Plan. If you want to learn more about how you can get involved, visit the Office of Sustainability’s website. (April 2018)  

Professor Matt Kinsella presented “Bioprinting Tumor Models with Mechanically and Biochemically Tunable Bioinks that Mimic the Native Tumor Microenvironment” at Select Biosciences fourth annual BioEngineering 2018 conference in Boston, Massachusetts. (March 2018)

Professor Dan Nicolau was invited to speak at The Royal Society’s Computation by Natural Systems scientific meeting in Buckinghamshire, England. You can listen to Prof. Nicolau’s talk, “Computing with Motile Biological Agents Exploring Networks,” here. (March 2018)

Congratulations to Pooja Pushparaj, Master’s student in Prof. Kinsella’s lab, on being a co-first author on the article entitled “Effect of Cell Sex on Uptake of Nanoparticles: The Overlooked Factor at the Nanobio Interface” published in ACS NANO Publications. This is a collaborative project between McGill’s BBME program, Stanford University, and Harvard Medical School, investigating how cells from male or female patients interact with nanoparticles differently. (March 2018)

Professors Dan Nicolau and Sebastian Wacshmann-Hogiu attended the SPIE Photonics West 2018 conference in San Francisco from January 27 - February 1. Nicolau - who also chaired the event - presented the Prizmatix Young Investigator Award to two young scientists for the work they presented at SPIE Nanoscale Imaging, Sensing, and Actuation for Biomedical Applications XIV. (February 2018)

Two papers from Prof. Adam Hendricks' group have recently been published online: Acetylated Microtubules Are Preferentially Bundled Leading to Enhanced Kinesin-1 Motility, and Tau directs intracellular trafficking by regulating the forces exerted by kinesin and dynein teams. Linda Balabanian, co-author of the first paper, has kindly written a summary which can be read here. (February 2018)

Department Chair, Prof. Dan Nicolau, discusses the growing industry demands for bioengineers in La Presse. (November 2016)

The Department was proud to exhibit again this year at the Biomedical Engineering Society's Annual Meeting (BMES) (October 5-8) in Minneapolis, MN. (October 2016)

It was our pleasure to meet our first cohort of undergraduate students at our orientation session on August 31st! (August 2016)

Prof. Matt Kinsella is featured in Medicine Focus for his research involving non-invasive cancer detection. You can read more about his use of nanoparticles to track tumors in "The Future of Medicine is Very Small." (June 2016)

The Department of Bioengineering proudly participated in the 10th World Biomaterials Congress (May 17-22) and the Canada-Wide Science Fair (May 18-20). (May 2016)

We are please to announce that three abstracts from Prof. Matt Kinsella's research group have been published online: Bioprinting heterogeneous 3D tumor models, Multimodal theranostic polymersomes composed of hybrid inorganic nanoparticles and Mechanochemical synthesis of bismuth sulfide nanoparticles for their use as contrast probes in computed tomography imaging. These topics will be presented by the group at the upcoming World Biomaterials Congress (WBC) in Montreal (May 17-22). (April 2016)

Prof. Dan Nicolau is featured on CBC News for the development of an energy-efficient biological supercomputer. This biocomputer, which has the ability so solve multiple, complex mathematical problems simultaneously, is only the size of a book. Read more about his findings in his article, Parallel computation with molecular-motor-propelled agents in nanofabricated networks, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (February 2016)

We proudly announce Prof. Amine Kamen as Canada Research Chair Tier I in Bioprocessing of Viral Vaccines. (November 2015)

On October 1st, the Department of Bioengineering welcomed colleagues from McGill, neighboring universities, and industry to its first annual Lab Open House. Guests were given personal tours of state-of-the-art facilities and were offered a glimpse at the kind of research conducted on site. (October 2015)

The Department of Bioengineering exhibited at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting in Tampa, Florida from October 7-10. (October 2015)

Bioengineering hosted its first annual Undergraduate Lunch where students from across from the Faculty of Engineering and beyond had the chance to meet the Department's professors and learn about its latest course offerings over pizza. (September 2015)

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, Alpha-actinin binding kinetics modulate cellular dynamics and force generation, was published in the in the Journal PNAS. 
Commentary on above article by W.Ahmed and T.Betz: Dynamic cross-links tune the solid-fluid behavior of living cells. (May 2015)

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, Structurally Governed Cell Mechanotransduction through Multiscale Modeling, was published in the in the Journal Scientific Reports. (February 2015)

The Department of Bioengineering will be exhibiting at the Biomedical Engineering Society's Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas from October 22-25. (October 2014)

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, Probing the Stochastic, Motor-Driven Properties of the Cytoplasm Using Force Spectrum Microscopy, was published in the in the Journal Cell and featured in Harvard News. (August 2014)

Department Chair, Dan Nicolau, will be chairing the upcoming BiOS 2015 Symposium. (August 2014)

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, Platelet Bioreactor on a Chip, was published in the Journal Blood. (July 2014)

Professor Dan Nicolau was an invited speaker at the International Workshop on Micro-and Nanomachines in Hannover, Germany where he presented his talk: From Molecular Motors to Fungal Intelligence. (July 2014)

Professor Brandon Xia's article, Signatures of Pleiotropy, Economy and Convergent Evolution in a Domain-Resolved Map of Human–Virus Protein–Protein Interaction Networks, was published in in PLoS Pathogens. (October 2013)

The Department of Bioengineering's Antonella Fratino and Professor Allen Ehrlicher were present at McGill's Open House along with Engineering student volunteers Mohammad Attari, Martin Ahrens, Derek Burrows, Matthew Mayers and David Villegas Gonzalez. (October 2013)

Professor Allen Ehrlicher's article, The Role of Vimentin Intermediate Filaments in Cortical and Cytoplasmic Mechanics, was featured on the cover of Biophysical Journal. (October 2013)

The Department of Bioengineering was one of only three Canadian universities exhibiting at the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA from September 26-29. Professors Dan Nicolau and Matt Kinsella both presented papers at the conference. (September 2013)

Professor Brandon Xia's article, Consequences of Domain Insertion on Sequence-Structure Divergence in a Superfold, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) in July 2013. (September 2013)

Antonella Fratino joins the newly-founded Department of Bioengineering. (February 2012)