Graduate Students

Jon Craven

Jon earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2009. In 2012 he started his masters in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas and joined the Biomedical Microdevices and Nanotechnology Laboratory. He received his master’s in 2014 and his thesis work investigated the use of electrical impedance spectroscopy based sensors as a platform for detecting targets ranging from molecules to cells. He has continued to work in the BMNL lab and is currently pursuing his PhD in Biomedical Engineering.

Rujuta Munje

Rujuta D. Munje graduated from College of Engineering Pune, India with Bachelor of Technology in electrical engineering in 2008. She received her master’s in biomedical engineering in 2013 at the University of Florida at Gainesville. At UT Dallas, she is currently pursuing her Ph.D under the supervision of Dr. Shalini Prasad as a graduate research assistant at the Biomedical Microdevices and Nanotechnology lab. Her research interests lie in understanding surface modifications with the help of nano-textured metal oxide and leverage them to build techniques for ultrasensitive detection of biomarkers. Her current research work focuses on wearable bioelectronics to build diagnostic devices for biomolecules found in human sweat.

Vikram Kamakoti

Vikram received his undergraduate degree in Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering from SASTRA University in 2010. He received his MS in Electrical Engineering from University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in 2012. During his Master’s program he specialized in biomedical applications of electrical engineering. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Biomedical engineering at UTD. His research involves design and development of affinity based biosensors for diagnostic electrical biosensors using novel electrode material Molybdenum.

Hunter Stevenson

Hunter’s research in the BMNL focuses on electrode stability in context to both two and three electrode systems. His work aims to enhance sensitivity to targeted bioanalytes by optimizing electrode material on rigid and flexible substrates. Hunter plans to study the role of immunoassays built on the electrode surface to detect a target analyte using various methods of electrochemical detection. He will explore both faradaic and non-faradaic interactions from the analyte using multiple methods of electrochemical detection.

Raj Kugen Ramanathan

At Biomedical Microdevices and Nanotechnology Laboratory (BMNL), Raj has been working on developing a fully integrated circuit for the Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) applications while benchmarking potentiostats to achieve a comparable performance. The end product is expected to be handheld device friendly and uphold the accuracy and precision of the data measurement.

Badrinath Jagannath

Badri earned his Bachelors in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, India. Intrigued by the diverse scope of sensors, he was driven to pursue Biomedical Engineering for his grad school with biosensors and low-cost diagnostics as his focus of research. During his Master’s at Arizona State University, he worked on the identification of volatile signature for early diagnosis of cancer. Badri is currently pursuing his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at UTD. His research interests are to develop novel detection methods for early diagnosis of neuromuscular diseases such as Muscular dystrophy. His current work encompasses validation of various electrode material stacks for development of portable biosensors.

Edward Graef

Edward W. Graef Jr. earned his Bachelors in Physics and Engineering Physics from the Southeast Missouri State University in 2007. Upon graduation he attended the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and, in 2010, completed his thesis Master’s degree in Microelectronics-photonics with a thesis titled “Thinning of Solid State Nanopores.” He started his PhD work in Dr. Shalini Prasad’s lab studying the adsorption of carbon dioxide in room temperature ionic liquids specifically the effects of molecular symmetry vs gas uptake.

Akshay Vasudevan

Edward W. Graef Jr. earned his Bachelors in Physics and Engineering Physics from the Sou

Akshay is a graduate student pursuing a Master’s Degree in Biomedical Engineering in The University of Texas at Dallas. His current research focus lies in the field of nanotechnology in medicine and biosensors. He graduated with his Bachelor’s in Biomedical Electronics from Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering, Bangalore in 2014.

Ambalika Tanak

Ambalika Tanak received her Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering from Watumull Institute of Electronics Engineering and Computer Technology, India in 2013 with distinction. She joined University of Texas at Dallas in fall 2014 as a graduate student and joined BMNL as a graduate researcher in summer 2015, under the guidance of Dr. Shalini Prasad and received her Master’s in 2016. Currently she has been working on building unique bio sensing platform based on electrospun fibers for her doctoral research work.

Ashlesha Bhide

Ashlesha joined BMNL in Fall 2016 as a graduate student pursuing a doctoral degree in Bio Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. She received her Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada in 2014. Her research was focuses on developing a microfluidic platform for cell characterization.

Nikhil Sarma

Nikhil is a graduate student from the Molecular Biology department currently working in BMNL toward testing electrokinetic platform for cellular characterization using non-small cell lung carcinoma study model. He earned his Master’s degree in Biotechnology from University of Pune, India and his primary interests are biotechnology tests for biomedical applications.

Sayali Upasham

Sayali received her B.E. in Biotechnology from Mumbai University (India) in 2016. Her undergrad specialization was in Nanotechnology which focused on creation of cellulose nanofibers and characterizing them. She is currently a graduate research worker at BMNL focusing on electrospinning polymer composites for biosensing applications. Her research interest lies in Biomedical nanodiagnostics and nano composites.

Jeyashree Natasan

Jeyashree graduated in 2015 from Anna University, India with Bachelor’s in Biotechnology. As part of her undergrad thesis she was involved in research on Mycobacterial and Non-Tuberculosis Mycobacterial (NTM) species to develop a restriction map and an algorithm for sub-species level profiling. At Dr. Prasad’s lab she is engaged in biochemical assays focused on protein quantification techniques.