Current Students:
Sophia Shen (Undergraduate)- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
Sophia Shen is currently a senior undergraduate in the department of Electrical Engineering and a member of Dr. Jun Chen’s Wearable Bioelectronics lab. This year, she is a part of the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) at UCLA to advance her research. Her research interests focus on developing wearable bioelectronics and personalized healthcare devices. So far, she has published 19 papers, four of which are first-author, in journals including Advanced Materials, ACS Nano, Advanced Science, Matter, etc. After graduation, she plans on attending Stanford to obtain her PhD in Bioengineering, where has also been selected to receive the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship that will further support her through her academic career
Rohit Rangwani (MS/Ph.D.Student)- American Heart Association (AHA) Predoctoral Fellowship
Rohit Rangwani, MS/Ph.D. student in the Bioengineering Graduate Program, UCLA) and Visiting Graduate Student at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC)’s Center for Neural Science and Medicine (CNSM) received a two-year AHA predoctoral fellowship for $65,106/ 2 years ( from 1/1/23 to 12/31/24). The title of his project is “A cerebellar activity driven brain-machine interface”. Rohit is conducting his thesis research in the lab of Dr. Tanuj Gulati, Affiliate Assistant Professor of Bioengineering (at UCLA) and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Neurology at Cedars-Sinai.
Jenna Wahbeh (Ph.D. Student)- Orthopaedic Research Society Spine Section Travel Fellowship
The 2023 Spine Section Travel Fellowship winner is Jenna Wahbeh (Dr. Sophia Sangiorgio, JVL Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory at the Luskin Orthopaedic Institute for Children, Los Angeles, USA) and will be host-mentored by Dr. Stewart McLachlin (University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada). Her research with Dr. Sophia Sangiorgio at the JVL Orthopaedic Biomechanics Laboratory at the Luskin Orthopaedic Institute for Children, in alliance with UCLA, focuses on the evaluation and performance of total joint replacements, specifically in the cervical spine. This research is centered around the
creation of a reproducible biofidelic cervical spine model for cost-effective preclinical testing. Rather than targeting a proprietary design, this composite model is meant to be versatile and easily translatable to other research centers, such as the lab she will be visiting for this travel award. This award will
provide Jenna with the opportunity to collaborate in-person with the University of Waterloo and work with Dr. Stewart McLachlin and his research team to further refine her model. This emerging collaboration will advance the ongoing research efforts of both laboratories and ultimately improve the
performance of cervical disc replacements.
Guorui (Gary) Chen (Ph.D. Student)- Materials Research Society (MRS) Graduate Student Gold Award and Arthur Nowick Graduate Student Award and Xun Zhao (Ph.D. Student) has been awarded the MRS Graduate Student Silver Award.
Gary Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Bioengineering under the supervision of Prof. Jun Chen. His research focuses on leveraging bioelectronics and artificial intelligence for biomedical research and healthcare. Gary has published 46 journal articles and 18 of them are the first author in Chemical Reviews, Nature Electronics, Advanced Materials, Matter, ACS Nano, Trends in Biotechnology, and Biosensors and Bioelectronics. His research work has been cited more than 3500 times.
Xun Zhao is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Bioengineering under the supervision of Prof. Jun Chen. His work focuses on bioelectronics for energy and healthcare applications. Xun has already published 35 journal articles with 10 of them being the first authors in Nature Materials, Nature Communication, Joule, Matter, et al. In one of his recent works, he invents a soft magnetoelastic generator as an emerging approach to revive the community of biomechanical energy conversion. This discovery established an alternative way for biomechanical to electrical conversion which could work stably on wet skin or in body fluids without reliance on any encapsulation. For example, he invented a textile magnetoelastic generator, weaving the 1D soft magnetoelastic fibers with conductive yarns, which could be used for energy harvesting from the human body and convert the arterial pulse into high-fidelity and analyzable electrical signals.
The MRS Graduate Student Award recognizes graduate students whose academic achievements and current materials research display a high level of excellence and distinction. The Arthur Nowick Graduate Student Award, named in honor of the late Dr. Arthur Nowick, is presented to a graduate student who shows great promise as a future teacher and mentor. Out of a competitive cohort of nineteen finalists from around the world, Gary was selected as one of the eight recipients of the Gold Award and the sole recipient of the Arthur Nowick Award. Xun was selected as one of the ten recipients of the Silver Award.
Soulaïmane Bentaleb- Undergraduate (Undergraduate Research Week Awardee)
Soulaïmane received the Dean’s Prize for Excellence in Research: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Engineering Award Winner for his project titled “Unsupervised Classification of Interictal iEEG Activity as Pathological or Physiological in Epilepsy Patients” under the mentorship of Prof. Wentai Liu!
Alumni:
Griffith Hughes (Undergraduate-Class of 2022)- Edward K. Rice Outstanding Bachelor’s Student
Throughout his time as a bioengineering student at UCLA, Griffith Hughes showed passion, dedication and diligence in both his academic pursuits and extracurricular activities.
While working as an undergraduate researcher in the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology at UCLA Health, Hughes participated in a study on the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. He developed a software program that organized scanned pathology slides and was involved in the design and 3D printing of several laser jigs used in the center’s research.
Hughes also worked for UCLA Emergency Medical Services as an emergency medical technician and a field training officer. A member of UCLA’s honors engineering society, Tau Beta Pi, he held several leadership positions in the Biomedical Engineering Society at UCLA, including serving as the student club’s mentorship program chair and academic program chair.
In 2022, Hughes was awarded the Williams L. Martin Engineering Undergraduate Scholarship for his service and leadership. At graduation, he received summa cum laude honors and won several awards, including the school-wide Harry M. Showman Prize for communicating research, the Bioengineering Department’s Outstanding Bachelor of Science Award, a Chancellor’s Service Award and an Engineering Achievement Award in Student Welfare.
Hughes is continuing his studies at UC San Diego, pursuing an M.S. in bioengineering.