Rate My Professor Ian Papautsky

Ian Papautsky is the Richard and Loan Hill Professor in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago, contributing to the Engineering faculty. He earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Utah in 1999 and his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University in 1995. Prior to joining UIC in 2016, he was at the University of Cincinnati, where he received the 2016 Distinguished Engineering Researcher Award from the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the 2013 William H. Middendorf Research Excellence Award from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. At UIC, he was awarded the 2018 Distinguished Established Researcher Award from the College of Medicine. Papautsky is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the Royal Society of Chemistry, and a Senior Member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. He serves as Co-Director of the NSF Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics.

His laboratory focuses on innovating blood analysis technologies using microfluidics and sensing for precision and point-of-care medicine. Research specializations include electrochemical methods for trace metal detection in blood, inertial microfluidics for label-free isolation of circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor microemboli, liquid biopsy technologies, blood fractionation, and microfluidic platforms for personalized lung cancer models with patient-derived organoids. Papautsky pioneered inertial microfluidics for cell separations, with his work cited over 14,000 times. Key publications are 'Isolation of circulating tumor cells in non-small-cell-lung-cancer (NSCLC) patients using a multi-flow microfluidic channel' (Microsystems & Nanoengineering, 2019), 'Capture of circulating tumour cell clusters using straight microfluidic chip' (Cancers, 2019), 'Single stream inertial focusing in low aspect-ratio triangular microchannels' (Lab on a Chip, 2019), and 'Isolation of cells from whole blood using shear-induced diffusion' (Scientific Reports, 2018). He has held leadership roles such as Workshop Chair for the 21st International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (microTAS 2017), Technical Program Committee member for microTAS (2016-present), and Conference Organizing Committee member for SPIE Microfluidics, BioMEMS, and Medical Microsystems conferences (2008-present).