Tom Gaborski – Lab Director and Principal Investigator
Tom Gaborski, Ph.D.
Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Director, Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Ph.D. Program
CV (PDF), Link to RIT Faculty Profile, Google Scholar, Twitter
Tom is an entrepreneurial bioengineering faculty member and co-founder of a nanomaterials startup company, SiMPore Inc. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Biological and Environmental Engineering from Cornell University and completed an M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Rochester. As a graduate student, he was a university presidential fellow and recipient of an NIH Individual Kirschstein-NRSA predoctoral fellowship. His graduate research focused on leukocyte recruitment and the biophysics of adhesion molecule mobility and surface localization. It was during this work that he became involved with the life science applications of a novel class of ultrathin membranes leading to the co-founding of SiMPore in 2007, where he helped raise two rounds of investment. While at SiMPore, he was the principal investigator on several NIH small business innovative research grants and brought several products to market. After serving as President of SiMPore, Dr. Gaborski joined the newly formed Biomedical Engineering Department at RIT in 2012 as a founding member. He is an inventor on several issued patents in nanobiotechnology and author of more than 50 publications in Nature, ACS Nano, Small, Biomaterials, PNAS, and other scientific journals. As the director of the NanoBio Materials Laboratory at RIT, he leads a team studying and developing nanomembranes for tissue-on-a-chip and biological separations, including extracellular vesicle purification and wearable hemodialysis. His laboratory has been funded by four institutes at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, New York State, the Hopeman Foundation, as well as multiple industry partners. He is also the Director of the Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Ph.D. program at RIT.
When not working, Tom likes to run (ideally on trails), ride bikes (mostly MTB these days with his kids), ski (he recently learned downhill after years of nordic racing), and attend to his mini-orchard. When not partaking in one of these hobbies, he’s probably hiking or camping with his family somewhere in the Adirondack Mountains.
Lab Members
Research Staff
Kevin Petersen, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Jason Gerbsch
Research Laboratory Technician
Graduate Students
Munther Alsudais
Biomedical & Chemical Engineering Ph.D. Student
Atiyeh Hosseinifakhr
Biomedical & Chemical Engineering Ph.D. Student
Nadya Nikiforova
Biomedical & Chemical Engineering Ph.D. Student
Pantea Torabian
Biomedical & Chemical Engineering Ph.D. Student
Louis Widom
Biomedical & Chemical Engineering Ph.D. Student
Undergraduate Students
Daniel DiMartino
Biotechnology B.S. Student
Leanna Frasch
Biomedical Engineering B.S. Student
Cara Guernsey
Biomedical Engineering B.S. Student
Nick Luey
Biomedical Engineering B.S. Student
Interested in joining our team?
Check for open undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and staff positions here.
Postdoctoral Researcher Alumni
Alan Man, now Assoc Professor, Engineering, Pierce College
Robert Carter, now Assoc Department Head, Mechanical Engineering, RIT
Henry Chung, now Project Engineer, Triton Systems
Marcela Mireles, now Research Engineer, University of Rochester
Ph.D. Student Alumni
Mehdi Aslan Dehghani, now Scientist, Sartorius Stedim
Alec Salminen (Co-advised with James McGrath), now ORISE Postdoc at FDA
Shayan Gholizadeh, now Postdoc at Harvard Medical School
Zahra Allahyari, now Postdoc at Harvard Medical School
Adeel Ahmed (co-advised with Vinay Abhyankar), now Postdoc at UWisc-Madison
M.S. Student Alumni
Cody Soule, now Principal Process Engineer, Global Foundries
David Hurley, now Research and Development Process Engineer, SIEV Technologies
Stephanie Boula, now Project Manager, Confluent Medical
Daniella Lincoln, now Process Engineer, Bausch + Lomb
Undergraduate Alumni
Joshua Miller
Katelyn Busse
Alex Dawson-Elli
Michael Potter
Zachary Oppito
Jascha Wilcox
Andrea Mazzocchi
Elizabeth Stoyan
Randi Del Rosario
Melissa Mendoza
Ana Peredo
Spencer Perry
Stephanie Casillo
Elizabeth Hirschman
Shane Peechatka
Sean Bellefeuille
Phillip Tinder
Shannon Gulvin
Nikki VanOstrand
Hayley Miller
Sarah Henretta
Zoii Henry
Anna Kasper
Jess Ritz
Jazmin Salazar