Our People - Biomedicine

Research Interests:

• Dynamics and control of MEMS
• Design of MEMS devices
• Micro-power generation
• Multi-body dynamics and control
• Biomechanics

ResearchGate

Google Scholar

Research Interests:

• Simulation, light and matter interactions, biomedical applications
• Predictive simulation of light interactions with organic and inorganic materials
• Realistic modeling of material appearance for image synthesis
• Remote sensing (effects of adverse environmental conditions on crops and forests)
• Biomedical optics (development of procedures and equipment for the prevention and treatment of different medical conditions, from jaundice to skin cancer)

ResearchGate

YouTube channel

Research Interests:

• Health informatics

• Translational research in healthcare and medicine

• Health system integration
• Semantic interoperability
• Healthcare decision making and decision support
• Health data analytics
• Medical imaging informatics
• Patient safety
• Mobile health
• Wearable devices

Google Scholar

[Waterloo Stories] July 10, 2017 "Waterloo software improves care for kidney patients"

[CBB researcher story] July 21, 2015 "Data management in Health Care"

Research Interests:

• Effect of food, beverages, herbal products and other drugs on drug metabolism and disposition
• Investigation of the interaction between grapefruit juice and prescription medication
• pharmacokinetics

• drug metabolism

• pharmacogenomics

• drug interactions

• bioavailability/bioequivalence

LinkedIn

Research Interests:

• Intelligent drug delivery system design (dermal, transdermal, transmucosal, ocular, and intranasal) for Dermatology, Ophthalmology, Cancer, Immunology (Glaucoma, neural degenerative disorders, HPV, LSIL/CIN I, cervical cancer, Scleroderma)

• Non-invasive drug delivery technologies, biomolecular devices

• Gene therapy, protein, and vaccine development

• Nanomedicine, pharmaceutical development

• Nanotoxicology (nanomaterials, bioimaging, biomarkers)

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

[Global Impact] [CBC] April 30, 2018 "Working with gene therapy to treat glaucoma"

[Waterloo Stories] July 5, 2012 "Revolutionary drug delivery"

Research interests:

• Public Health - access to care and healthcare system efficiency
• Telehealth - remote delivery of healthcare locally and globally
• Health Informatics – use of AI and machine learning to optimize the diagnosis and management of ocular disease
• Ocular Disease & Ophthalmic Imaging
• Interprofessional Education and Collaboration

Research interests:

Research Interests:

• Clinical trial design
• Contact lens performance
• Drug delivery
• Ocular biomaterials
• Proteins at interfaces

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

University Research Chair

Office of Research - Technology Transfer & Commercialization:

• Long-lasting Eye Drop Delivery Platform for Targeted Ocular Delivery Applications

Research Interests:

• Design/discovery of potential therapeutics to target various diseases
• Understanding the structure and pharmacology of membrane proteins
• Development of in silico methods/tools for sequence, structure and functional analysis
• Inferring the structure-function evolution of proteins
• Protein engineering for biotechnology and pharmaceutical applications

[American Chemical Society] January 23, 2012 "Exploring Inhibitor Release Pathways in Histone Deacetylases Using Random Acceleration Molecular Dynamics Simulations"

[Wiley Online Library] July 27, 2013 "Ligand release mechanisms and channels in histone deacetylases"

[Royal Society of Chemistry] December 19, 2013 "A steered molecular dynamics mediated hit discovery for histone deacetylases"

[Nature Methods] May 8, 2017 "ModelFinder: fast model selection for accurate phylogenetic estimates"

[Royal Society of Chemistry] October 24, 2017 "Reverse engineering: transaminase biocatalyst development using ancestral sequence reconstruction"

Research Interests:

• Biophysics of lipids and lipid-protein interactions

• The role of structural changes and physical properties of lipid template in controlling biological processes and diseases

• Biomedical nanotechnology (lipid films, molecular mechanism of Alzheimer's disease)

• Drug development and delivery systems, antimicrobial peptides in lung disorders

• Fluorescence and atomic force microscopy

• Kelvin probe force microscopy and single molecule force spectroscopy

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

Google Scholar

[Global Impact] May 2018, studying Alzheimer's at a molecular level to find a cure

[YouTube Lecture] October 1, 2014 "Scanning probe microscopy in biomedical research"

Research Interests:

Research interests:

• Aging and neurodegeneration
• Movement disorders
• Gait kinematics
• Neuropsychology and neurocognitive assessment
• Mood, emotion and cognition
• Fear, threat, anxiety and depression
• Virtual reality

Google Scholar

Research interests:

• Neurodegeneration
• Huntington Disease
• Autophagy
• Apoptosis
• Fatty acylation

Google Scholar

Research interests: 

• Neurobiological embedding of adversity
• Biological characteristics that influence outcome from brain injury
• Drug development, biomarkers
• Stroke; biological characteristics that influence outcomes from brain injury

Google Scholar

Research Interests:

• Drug discovery
• Rational drug design and medicinal chemistry
• Cancer therapy
• Treatment of neurological disorders (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's)
• Drug discovery/rational design
• Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel organic molecules and peptides/peptidomimics as therapeutic agents

ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

[Science News] October 22, 2018 "Nekkar lab determines that depression medications can help treat Alzheimer’s disease"

​[Pharmacy News] July 29, 2015 "Waterloo pharmacist examines drug therapies for Alzheimer’s disease"

Research Interests:

• Protein and DNA separation analysis towards disease diagnosis and drug discovery

• Biosensing and Devices (bacterial, proteins, fluorescence)

• Living cell analysis and water toxicity testing

• Lab-on-a-Chip technology (point-of-care biomedical diagnosis , chemical detection, protein separation and identification, environmental testing)

• Micro-scale fluid mechanics, droplet microfluidics and nanofluidics

• High Throughput Screening For Drug Screening
• Manufacturing Nanomaterials and Carbon Management

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

Canada Research Chair in Lab-on-a-Chip Technology [Canada Research Chair Profile]

[Waterloo Stories] June 14, 2012 "Creating the tiny future of science"

Research Interests

• Early Cancer Detection
• Eliminating Positive Surgical Margins
• Non-contact Biopsies for Endoscopy 
• Functional Brain Imaging 
• Early Detection and Understanding the Age-related Vision Loss Problems
• Wound Care
• Cardiovascular
• Machine learning/AI

[Linkedin]

[Google Scholar]

Research Interests:

• Drug discovery, delivery systems and nanomedicine

• Gene therapy, microbial genetics

• Oncology, Antiviral therapeutics design

• Anti-bacterials

• Acne cosmeceutical design

• Phage-based biotechnology

• Viral exclusion systems

• Cosmeceuticals

• Vaccine design (dementia), bacteriophage-based biotechnology, use of coliphages to design and construct vectors for the development of novel vaccines, pharmaceuticals and gene delivery systems, and the identification and application of novel phage genomic anti-bacterial genes with potential phage therapy applications.

• Strategic management in Pharmacy; healthcare reform

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

Research Interests:

• Calcium channel analysis for target drug delivery for treatment of pain, arrhythmias, angina, and potential benefits in treatment of epilepsy and cancer.

• Structure, function and pharmacology of calcium channels and sodium channels

• Structure and function and analysis of NALCN cation channel  and anti-calcium channel toxins

• The Spafford Neurobiology Research Laboratory studies voltage-gated calcium channels, molecular physiology, biophysics, cell biology, protein biochemistry, fluorescence microscopy and tissue cultures.

LinkedIn

ResearchGate

​Google Scholar

[Science News] April 25, 2014 "Waterloo discovers a key regulator in the pacemakers of our brain and heart"

Research Interests:

• Nanomaterials, nanodevices, biosensors for applications in food processing, bioreactors and biotechnology, natural gas purification, fuel cell, and water purification

• Nano-Bio Hybrids for Tissue Engineering and Medicine for drug delivery, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine

• Bio-molecule assisted nanomaterial self-assembly

• Health and environmental effects of engineered nanomaterials

Research Interests:

• Medicinal chemistry/enzymology (treatment of prostate and breast cancer, diabetes)

• Nanomedicine; development of novel antibiotics

• Bionanomaterials; synthetic polymers and methodologies

• Peptide, charbohydrate, nucleoside and nucleotide chemistry

[Daily Bulletin] June 1, 2018, 11 CBB Members Named Outstanding Performance Award Winners

[Science News] February 4, 2015 "Chemists develop new method to improve the discovery of antibiotics"

Research interests:

• Vision rehabilitation
• Systems for optimizing patient care outcomes
• Retinal disease
• Pharmacology.