People
Abe Stroock
Gordon L. Dibble ’50 Professor, Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University
Adjunct Professor, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University
Director, NSF STC Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS)
bio: I grew up in Colorado and Massachusetts. I've lived in France for several years. I live in Ithaca with family and many bicycles. I studied physics and chemistry at Cornell, the University of Paris, and Harvard and joined the faculty of Cornell in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2003.
research interests: Transport phenomena and thermodynamics of liquids; biophysics of plants.
contact:
a: 167a Olin Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
w: www.cheme.cornell.edu/faculty-directory/abraham-d-stroock
e: abe.stroock (at) cornell.edu
t: +1 607-255-4276
Postdoctoral Fellows
Dr. Vesna Bacheva
Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Plant Biology Section, School of Integrative Plant Science
Kavli Institute at Cornell
bio: I was born in Macedonia and relocated to Switzerland during my teenage years. I am a microengineer who has received training from EPFL and IBM Research in Switzerland, as well as Technion in Israel. Fascinated by plants, I joined Cornell in 2023 to work on new technologies and methods to study the vascular transports in plants. I’m co-hosted by the labs of Abe Stroock and Margaret Frank with support from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Kavli Institute at Cornell.
research interests: hydrodynamics and transport phenomena, plant physiology, microfabrication
contact:
a: 224 Olin Hall
e: vb333 (at) cornell.edu
PhD Candidates
Sahil Desai
Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
bio: I was born and brought up in Gujarat, India. I moved to Rajasthan to pursue my bachelors in chemical engineering at Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. During my studies, I had the opportunity to spend a semester at Max Planck Institute in Germany to work on my bachelor's thesis. Following my undergraduate, I joined Abe’s group at Cornell in 2019 as a master’s student. Intrigued by the systems biology of plants, I am pursuing my PhD with Abe. I spend my time running and biking around the beautiful trails and waterfalls in Ithaca.
research interests: systems biology, synthetic biology, mathematical modeling and simulation, electrophysiology, plant physiology
contact:
a: 224 Olin Hall
e: sad269 (at) cornell.edu
Muzhi Jiang
Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
bio: I'm from China, and joined the StroockGroup in 2023. Prior to my admission at Cornell, I majored in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and was exposed to research in biomechanics, microfluidic experiments and liquid metal based electronics for plants at Institute of Mechanics and Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, CAS. I'm interested in both theoretical and experimental research in the interdisciplinary field of biology and mechanics, and will work on fundamental studies in plant physiology as well as design, fabrication and applications of innovative devices for plants. I like traveling and playing soccer in my leisure time.
research interests: plant physiology, microfluidics, soft materials, biosensors
contact:
a: 224 Olin Hall
e: mj584 (at) cornell.edu
Sabyasachi Sen
Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
bio: I grew up in India and attended IIT Kharagpur for my undergrad. There, I studied mechanical engineering and fell in love with the countryside. Cornell’s idyllic setting in the finger lakes region was naturally attractive to me. I arrived here in Fall 2020 and joined Abe Stroock’s group to study plant physiology. Outside of work, I can be seen at pickup soccer games and at the Emirates Stadium if Arsenal is having a decent season.
research interests: Plant physiology, transport phenomena.
contact:
a: 224 Olin Hall
e: ss3945 (at) cornell.edu
Eric (I-Feng) Wu
Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
bio: I grew up in Tainan, Taiwan. I studied chemical engineering at National Taiwan University in Taipei for a few years. I joined the StroockGroup in 2021, fascinated by the connection of water transport between living and engineered systems. I am working on developing methods to investigate transport phenomena in porous media, and the further application for thermal management.
research interests: Transport phenomena in porous media; Soft matters; Sensing technology
contact:
a: 224 Olin Hall
e: iw63 (at) cornell.edu
Undergraduates
Tiff Lin
Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
bio: I am an undergraduate student in the class of 2024 majoring in Chemical Engineering. I joined the StroockGroup in 2022, amazed by how plants navigated extreme conditions and the big-picture implications of understanding plant water usage on the conservation of resources in agriculture.
research interests: Leaf Infiltration and Product Design.
contact:
a: 224 Olin Hall
e: tl477 (at) cornell.edu
Alumni
Stephane Badaire - Principal Materials Designer, Michelin Advanced Research (link).
Dominik Barz - Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, Queens University (link).
William Bedell - Business Development Manager, Wyss Institute, Harvard University (link).
Winston Black - Laboratory Manager, Pall Corp (link).
Mario Cabodi - Research Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University (link).
I-Tzu Chen - Software Engineer, Momento (link).
Eugene Choi
Nak Won Choi - Principal Researcher & Head of Brain Science Institute, Korean Institute of Science and Technology (link).
Cecile Cottin-Bizonne - Director of Research, CNRS/Universite de Lyon, France (link).
Michael Craven - Principal Scientist, 3DBio Therapeutics (link).
Valerie Cross - Product specialist, W.L. Gore and Associates, Medical Products Division
Anthony Diaz - Associate Director Project Management, Merck (link).
Rui Gao - Process Engineer, Applied Materials (link).
Annika Huber - Scientist, Pall Corp (link).
Erik Huber - R&D Director, Cytiva (link).
Piyush Jain - Runway Startup Postdoc, Cornell Tech (link)
Joseph Kirtland - Associate Professor of Physics, Alfred University (link).
Pierre Lidon - Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Lab of Future/U. Bordeaux (link).
Hanwen Lu - Data Scientist, Grammarly (link).
John Morgan
Vinay Pagay - Senior Lecturer, School of Agriculture, University of Adelaide (link).
Matthew Paszek - Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University. (link)
Amit Pharkya - Senior Manager, ASM (link).
Fulton Rockwell - Research Associate, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University (link).
David Sessoms - Engineer, Optomec Inc. (link).
Michael Santiago - CEO, FloraPulse Co. (link).
Vikram Singh - Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. (link)
Mengrou Shan - NIH F32 Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan (link)
Pavithra Sundararajan - Assistant Principal Scientist, Merck (link).
Scott Verbridge - Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Virginia Tech (link).
Olivier Vincent - Research Scientist, CNRS/Universite de Lyon, France (link).
Tobias Wheeler - Director of Microfluidics, 10x Genomics (link).
Ying Zheng - Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, University of Washington (link).
Jiamin Zhang - Assistant Professor of Teaching in Chemical and Environmental Engineering, UC Riverside (link).
Siyu Zhu - Senior Process Engineer, Applied Materials (link).