mauro ferrari

Mauro Ferrari’s higher education began at the University of Padova, Italy, where he received the degree of Dottore in Matematica in 1985. He attended the University of California at Berkeley as an undergraduate (1984-85), then returned to Berkeley in 1986, to earn his graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering (M.S., 1987; Ph.D., 1989).
While a graduate student, he became an Assistant Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Udine, Italy, where he taught and conducted research, in alternate sessions with his obligations at Berkeley from 1988 through 1990.
Starting January 1, 1991, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor again at the University of California at Berkeley, with a split appointment in the Departments of Materials Science and Mineral Engineering, and Civil and Environmental Engineering.
At Berkeley, he earned his tenure and promotion to Associate Professor rank in 1996, and joined the Graduate Groups in Bioengineering (1996-99), Biophysics (1997-99), and Applied Science and Technology (1997-99). He also served as Director of Berkeley’s Biomedical Microdevices (bioMEMS) Center (1996-99), and as Staff Scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (1998-99).
Dr. Ferrari accepted his current tenured positions of Professor of Internal Medicine, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Director of the Biomedical Engineering Center at The Ohio State University starting January 1, 1999. He was appointed an Associate Director of the Heart and Lung Institute on July 1, 2000. He was honored with the Edgar J. Hendrickson Endowed Chair in Biomedical Engineering in 2001. He also serves as consulting advisor to many leading biotechnology companies, and to The Cleveland Clinic Research Foundation in biomedical microdevices (1999). He is the scientific founder and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of iMEDD, Inc (1998-). He is the Chairman of the State-sponsored “Ohio MicroMD: The Ohio BioMEMS Consortium in Medical Therapeutics”.
He is also Associate Vice President for Health Sciences, Technology and Commercialization at the Ohio State University. His research and teaching have been focused, throughout his career, on micro- and nano-mechanics, and their biomedical applications. In these fields, he has published over one hundred papers (typically in journals such as Biomedical Microdevices, Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Journal of Applied Physics, Biomaterials, and others), and two books (two more are in preparation). He has obtained 14 issued US and International patents.
His contributions have been recognized by a variety of accolades, including the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation (1993-98), a Shannon Director’s Award of the National Institutes of Health (1998-2000), and the Wallace H. Coulter Award for Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1999).
His career research and development portfolio totals over $30 million, including support from the NIH, NSF, DARPA, DoE, as well as the Board of Regents of the State of Ohio, The Ohio State University, and private enterprises such as Roche, Boehringer-Mannheim, Alcoa, Vion Pharmaceuticals, and iMEDD. Dr. Ferrari is the Editor-in-Chief of “Biomedical Microdevices” (Kluwer Academic Publishers), the only archival journal dedicated solely to BioMEMS and biomedical nanotechnology, and serves as reviewer for a multitude of other journals. He is regularly invited as keynote speaker and lecturer at major congresses and Universities.
In 1999, he chaired the SPIE conference on BioMEMS (January), and Cambridge HealthTech Institute’s BioMEMS (April) and Biomedical Nanotechnology (November) conferences. He has served as Conference Chairman for the first three “BioMEMS and Biomedical Nanotechnology World conferences (2000-2002). He is the President of the International Society for BioMEMS and Biomedical Nanotechnology. He regularly chairs panels of the National Cancer Institute and NASA, and served on committees of the National Academy of Sciences (Armed Forces), DARPA (invited workshop on nanotechnology) and the Department of Energy.
Dr. Ferrari is married, with five children, including two sets of twin girls. His extended “family” comprises former students and post-docs of his, that currently occupy faculty positions at MIT (Nicola Marzari), Duke University (J. Nadeau), the University of Illinois at Chicago (T. Desai), the University of California at Berkeley (L. Lee, not formally his advisee), Georgetown University (M. Paranjape), The Ohio State University (D. Hansford), and the University of Washington (M. Zhang). Former students of his are also employed as research scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (L. Kulinsky), the NIH (M. Sarntinoranont), and a multitude of private enterprises.
Updated: March 14, 2002