Consulting and Senior Scientific Team:
Mariano Ubeda M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Mariano Ubeda is a physician scientist with extensive experience at multiple levels of human disease understanding. He has maintained research and teaching positions at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Murcia for almost 30 years. In clinical pathology he was responsible for the development and validation of new tests as well as automation and digital processing of medical information. His research has covered many aspects of cardiovascular and endocrine diseases including arterial hypertension, atherosclerosis, diabetes mellitus, obesity and other inflammatory and autoimmune processes, apart of neurological degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's dementia. He is an expert in molecular biology, regulation of gene expression, and cell signaling. He has extensive experience in stem cell research and mechanisms for cell division, migration, tumor formation, differentiation, transdifferentiation, cellular stress responses, and programmed cell death. He has made important contributions in these areas including the design of new tests and assays. His work has resulted in many scientific publications, book chapters and patent applications. He is most recently centered in the creation of new diagnostic and therapeutic tools by engineering new molecules and molecular complexes in order to achieve a higher level of target specificity.
Ravi Khanna Ph.D.
Dr. Khanna is an electrical engineer who has been designing, fabricating, and testing semiconductor devices for more than twenty years. He has held positions in three fields: RF/wireless, microelectromechanical systems, and infrared detection and imaging. Participating in the new technology of MEMS under a project associated with founders of field, Dr. Khanna was hired for the MIT Microengine project to bring his industrial experience with semiconductor production to the university environment. This project is considered by many to be one of the most extensive MEMS projects ever undertaken. The processes, procedures, and protocols he and his team developed remain in use at the Microsystems Technology Lab on the MIT main campus. At BAE Systems he worked on a commercial MEMS microbolometer infrared sensor line and the production of focal plane arrays and the intricacies of quantifying imaging array performance for part selection. He developed methods for characterizing the microbolometers and correlating performance with the process environment. He moved to the solid-state HgCdTe infrared group to solve long-standing issues with test-station maintenance and reliability. At Skyworks (then Alpha Industries) he lead fabrication and device development efforts on the then-experimental III-V semiconductor platform, then lead it's conversion into a multimillion dollar commercial high-frequency product line. After seven years, he held engineering responsibility for every phase of the product, for source inspection to analyzing customer field data. The technology developed set the stage for product lines in RF and cellphone components now sold globally to most major OEM’s and chipset suppliers.
Aleksander Franz Ph.D.
Aleks has over 20 years of experience in MEMS R&D and manufacturing. He has led projects in all phases of product development, from device and packaging design, through process integration and process development and test, to manufacturing and yield improvement. Most recently, he worked at Pixtronix/Qualcomm as Principal Engineer Manager, in charge of FA, reliability, and yield improvement efforts for a high resolution MEMS display. He co-founded Lilliputian Systems, a venture backed company which developed micro solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) as alternative power sources for portable electronics. He was an instructor and research scientist at MIT, developing microfluidic and microchemical reactor technology. His process development and optimization experience spans work with academic facilities, foundries, national and international industrial partners, as well as in house fab design, start-up and operation. Aleks also has hands-on analytical experience with SEM/EDS, MS, Auger, XPS, OM, optical profilometry, ellipsometry, and others. He has a PhD from the University of Michigan and Master's and Bachelor's degrees from MIT.
