Microfluidics and BioMEMS Laboratory

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Dr. Z. Hugh Fan is a professor of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida (UF), USA. He holds MAE Excellence Term Professorship. From 2021 to 2023, Dr. Fan was the Director of Interdisciplinary Microsystems Group (IMG), which currently consists of eleven faculty members and is a college-wide, multi-departmental, education and research program of the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering. Dr. Fan is a member of UF Health Cancer Center, UF Emerging Pathogens Institute, and the Multi-functional Integrated System Technology (MIST) center sponsored by National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Fan was a visiting professor in Biomedical Diagnostics Institute at Dublin City University, Ireland in 2009. He was also a visiting professor at Fraunhofer Institute of Biomedical Engineering in Germany in the summer of 2010. Prior to joining UF in 2003, Dr. Fan was a Principal Scientist at ACLARA BioSciences Inc. (Mountain View, CA) for 3 years and was previously a Member of the Technical Staff at Sarnoff Corp. (Princeton, NJ, now a part of SRI International) for 5 years.

Dr. Fan's research interests include microfluidics, BioMEMS (Biomedical MicroElectroMechanical Systems), sensors, and bioengineering. His research focus is to develop microfluidics and BioMEMS technologies and apply them to chemical and biomedical applications. One of these applications is cancer diagnosis and prognosis, as discussed in his book "Circulating Tumor Cells: Isolation and Analysis" that is published in 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Dr. Fan is a recipient of E.T.S. Walton Award from Science Foundation of Ireland in 2009, Fraunhofer-Bessel Award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2010, and Career Award from National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2011.  He was a UF Research Foundation Professor from 2014 to 2017 and a UF Term Professor from 2016 to 2022. Dr. Fan received UF Technology Innovator Award in 2015 and 2014, UF-HHMI (Howard Hughes Medical Institute) "Science for Life" Distinguished Mentor Award in 2013, and UF-Sigma Xi Junior Faculty Research Award in 2006. One paper from his group won MEMS division “Best Paper” award at 2013 ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE). Dr. Fan is an editor of Microsystems & Nanoengineering (Nature Publishing Group) and an editorial board member of Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group), Biosensors  (MDPI), and Biomedical Materials (IOP Publishing). He is an elected Fellow of AAAS (the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the publisher of Science), ASME, and AIMBE (the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering).

Dr. Fan received his B. Sc. from Yangzhou Teachers' College (now a part of Yangzhou University) in China and his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in Canada. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Ames Laboratory of US Department of Energy at Iowa State University.

Email: hfan@ufl.edu; Telephone: 352-846-3021; Fax: 352-392-7303; Office: Larsen 223

Mailing Address: University of Florida, Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, 231 MAE-A Building, P.O. Box 116250, Gainesville, FL 32611-6250, USA

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