Our Team

Principal Investigator

Tzahi Cohen-Karni is a Professor at the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science engineering in Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA USA. He received both his B.Sc. degree in Materials Engineering and the B.A. degree in Chemistry from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel, in 2004. His M.Sc. degree in Chemistry from Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, in 2006 and his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA, in 2011. He was a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Children’s Hospital at the labs of Robert Langer and Daniel S. Kohane from 2011 to 2013. Dr. Cohen-Karni received the 2012 International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Young Chemist Award. In 2014, he was awarded the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation Young Investigator Research Award. In 2016, Dr. Cohen-Karni was awarded the NSF CAREER Award. In 2017, Dr. Cohen-Karni was awarded the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Award, The Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award and The George Tallman Ladd Research Award. In 2018, Dr. Cohen-Karni was awarded the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Young Innovator Award. In 2019, Dr. Cohen-Karni was awarded the Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT) Dean’s Early Career Fellowship.

Postdoctoral Researchers

Reem Khan (2024 – present) received her Masters in chemistry from COMSATS University Islamabad and PhD in chemistry and biomolecular science from Clarkson University Potsdam, NY. During her masters research at University of Perpignan, she worked on developing optical and electrochemical sensors for food safety applications. Her PhD research was focused on design and synthesis of engineered nanomaterials and exploring their properties for chemical and biosensing applications.

Han Kim (2024 – present) is a postdoctoral associate researcher in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Sungkyunkwan University, Korea. In 2024, He completed his Ph.D. in Applied Science and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation titled “Investigation of the structure and function relationship in bioelectricity using M13 virus model system.” His research interests focus on the fabrication and characterization of bioelectronic devices designed to monitor and influence electrophysiological activity, particularly in developing systems that interface with biological materials.

Ph.D. Students

Samuel Ariav Gershanok (2020-present) graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2019 with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering. His undergraduate research experiences include MEMS bio-device fabrication and Ni-Based Superalloy oxidation modeling. During the summer of 2018, Sam conducted Additive Manufacturing related research at Tel Aviv University. Sam is excited to build on his previous work experiences to help develop novel nano-scale biological indicator sensing devices in the Cohen-Karni Lab.

Inkyu Lee (2020-present) graduated from Konkuk University, Seoul in 2019 with a M.S. and B.S. and in Organic and Nano System Engineering. His previous research experience has been focused on the design and synthesis strategies of organic functional materials, which are applicable in electronics, energy harvesting, and sensory platforms. His interest lies in controlling selective reactions in-vivo and utilizing them for biomedical and healthcare applications. During the course of his doctorate studies at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, he looks forward to leverage his previous experiences to develop a novel electrocatalytic platforms for in-situ oxygen evolution.

Mabel Bartlett (2020-present) graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2021 with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering and an additional major in Biomedical Engineering. She completed a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in the Cohen-Karni Lab during the summer of 2020, working on optimizing data analysis methods for nitric oxide sensors, and continued to assist virtually through her senior year as an undergraduate at CMU. Mabel then transitioned to working on her Ph.D. in the Cohen-Karni Lab and is interested in developing devices for 3D electrical recordings in cardiac tissues to better understand disease models.

Liyang Wang (2021 – present) graduated from University of Washington in 2021 with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering. His undergraduate research focused on mechanical properties of human tooth enamel and he created a 3D unit cell model for dentin enamel junction. During his undergraduate education, he received James I. Mueller Scholarship Award and William E. Quist Award for academic achievement and leadership. Liyang is looking forward to working on materials design, synthesis and device fabrication in the Cohen-Karni Lab.

Seonghan Jo (2021-present) graduated from Hanyang University, Seoul in 2020 with a M.S. and B.S. and in Energy Engineering. His previous research experience was focused on the design and synthesis of nano/micro-sized materials for electrocatalysts and cathode of batteries. During the course of his doctorate studies, he looks forward to designing materials for oxygen reduction reaction and optimizing by machine learning.

Emily Trotto (2022 – present) graduated from Virginia Tech in 2021 with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering and a B.A. in Foreign Languages. Her undergraduate research focused on developing industrially viable processing methodologies for cellulose-reinforced polymer nanocomposites. Prior to joining the Cohen-Karni group she researched iontophoretic drug delivery in the Bettinger Lab at CMU. Emily is interested in working on materials synthesis and device fabrication for biosensing applications in the Cohen-Karni Lab.

Mengdi He (2022-present) graduated from Stanford University in 2022 with an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering. Her master’s thesis project was focused on the optimization and characterization of wholly-cellular bioinks for scaffold-free bioprinting. She is excited to combine tissue engineering and bioelectronics in the Cohen-Karni group, building 3D tissues and sensors to better understand disease models.

Daniel Ranke (2022-Present) graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering in 2021. His past research includes perovskite photovoltaics, materials in extreme environments, computational optimization of materials synthesis, and large-scale graphene manufacturing in academia, national labs, and industry. Daniel is currently a DoD-NDSEG fellow whose research is focused on developing nanoscale materials for chronically stable, high-channel bioelectronic devices.

Sarah Kim (2023 – present) graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021 with a B.S. in Bioengineering and Korea University in 2023 with a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering. Her master’s thesis project focused on fabrication of high-aspect-ratio silicon nanostructures for intracellular delivery of biomolecules into hard-to-transfect cells. Sarah is looking forward to working on flexible oxygenator device fabrication for cancer cell therapy in the Cohen-Karni lab.

Methu Dev Nath (2023-present) graduated from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, in 2022 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. He has previously worked with computational analysis of composite material interfaces and bioinspired 3D-printed metamaterials.  Methu is excited to explore the applications of 3D-printed microelectrode arrays in sensing the electrophysiology of organoids.

Aaditya Nandakumar (2023-present) graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering in 2023. Undergraduate research involved the fabrication of OLED and metal halide perovskite solar cell devices. Currently co-advised by Professor Rahul Panat. I will be working with these two professors to fabricate a stable device capable of in situ oxygenation in human tissue.

Karl Bates (2024-Present) graduated from the University of Akron in 2020. From 2019 to 2024, he worked in the aerospace industry with a focus on material characterization and systems engineering experiments. He returned to academia to pursue a career in biomedical device development, with a focus on multimodal sensing of neural signals.

Kyubo Kim (2024-Present) graduated from DGIST, DAEGU in 2021 with a B.S. in Neuroscience and worked as a first lieutenant in the Agency for Defense Development. His previous research includes olfactory perception, metal-organic framework-graphene oxide nanomembrane, and alginate acid-activated carbon-MOF composite fabrication. Kyubo is looking forward to stimulating cells and neurons more efficiently with nanomaterials.

Samarth Sandhu (2024 – Present) Received his M.S in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2023 and B.E in Biotechnology from Panjab University, Chandigarh in 2020. During his Master’s, he investigated bioactive anti-thrombogenic surface coatings on a microfluidic scale. Samarth is co-advised by Dr. Keith Cook and is working on developing sensing modalities for medical applications, with a focus on detecting clinically relevant markers in blood.

M.S. Students

Eli Barbour (2023-present) graduated from the State University of New York at Geneseo with a B.S. in Biochemistry.  During his undergraduate research, he studied the aggregation of amyloid-beta coated gold nanoparticles.  Eli is looking forward to working on the development of chemical-sensing applications and the printing of bioelectronics in the Cohen-Karni group. 

Alex Ezerins (2023 – present) graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2022 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. During his undergraduate studies, Alex contributed to projects involving 3D-printed prosthetics, styrene production plants, and automated syringe drug delivery systems. He also worked in Continuous Improvement for vaccine manufacturing, where he advanced recombinant influenza production and upheld quality control standards. Currently, Alex is focused on developing scalable production methods for metal-organic framework-based biosensors, aimed at catalytic sensing of nitric oxide.