- April 2019 – Present:
Distinguished University Research Professor, awarded and named at University of Cincinnati
- May 2010 – Present:
Michell P. Kartalia Endowed Chair Professor of Biomedical Microelectromechanical Systems (BioMEMS)
- Nov. 2002 – Present:
Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering (Secondary), University of Cincinnati
- Sept. 2001 – Present:
Professor, Director, Microsystems and BioMEMS Lab, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Cincinnati
- May 2016 – 2021:
Director, Engineering Research Center (ERC) Clean Room, and Ohio Center for Microfluidic Innovation (OCMI) at UC.
- Sept. 1998 – Aug. 2001:
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.
- Oct. 1994 – Aug. 1998:
Assistant Professor, Associate Director, Center for Microelectronic Sensors and MEMS (CMSM), Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio.
- June 1993 – Oct. 1994:
Post Doctoral Associate (Advisor: Dr. Luby Romankiw, IBM Fellow), Center for Electrochemical Technology and Microfabrication (CETAM), IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, New York/ Post Doctoral Associate (Advisor: Prof. Mark G. Allen), Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.
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Contribution and Recognition from His Education and Research Activities:
Dr. Ahn is now Distinguished University Research Professor and Mitchell P. Kartalia Endowed Chair Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Cincinnati. He is currently Director of the Engineering Research Center (ERC) Clean Room and the Ohio Center for Microfluidic Innovation (OCMI, funded from the Ohio 3rd Frontier Wright Projects Program) at the University of Cincinnati. Since joining the University of Cincinnati in 1994, he has successfully initiated and established an excellent Microfluidics and BioMEMS program (www.biomems.uc.edu) at the University of Cincinnati. He is well recognized internationally as one of the pioneers in the BioMEMS, microfluidics, lab-on-a-chip (LOC) and point-of-care testing (POCT). His research achievements from the BioMEMS and Microfluidic program at the University of Cincinnati has profoundly impacted over the advanced research and education in these areas. He is currently a Fellow at the Institute of Physics, and also a Fellow of the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati. Over the years at the University of Cincinnati, he has brought more than $20.0 M of research grants from DARPA, NSF, NIH, CDC, DOD, NASA, JPL and State of Ohio as PI or Co-PI. He advised 26 PhD and 19 MS graduate students at the University of Cincinnati. His 12 former PhD students are currently tenured or tenure-track faculty at the Universities in US, Taiwan, and S. Korea, and his 14 former PhD students are now working in industries and national research institutes as a research scientist in US and S. Korea.
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Research Impact
In specific, with the support of DARPA (MicroFlume Program) in 1997, his team had developed a new integrated microfluidic biochemical detection system for the analysis of bioterror agents [1]. The integrated system used a new on-chip magnetic bead-based sampling method. In addition, in 2000 with the support of DARPA (MicroFlip Program), for the first time his team had developed a new smart polymer lab-on-a-chip for the analysis of whole blood, which opened a new realm of disposable point-of-care testing (POCT) [2]. Furthermore, he had newly introduced and extensively explored Cyclic Olefin Copolymer (COC) as one of the most promising polymer materials for the polymer lab-on-a-chip. COC is now used in most industries and academia working on polymer lab-on-a-chip [3]. His research on the new polymer lab-on-a-chips [1-3] and the fundamentals of microfluidics [4] gave a high impact over the life science and diagnostic community which was thirst for new platforms of POCT [5] desired for the analysis of proteins or DNA molecules in small volume. He has published over ~142 journal papers and ~ 219 peer-reviewed conference proceeding papers, and chaired numerous international conferences and steering committees. In Google Scholar, he has around 16,450 citations and h-index of 62 as of April 2025. He was invited as a plenary or keynote speaker from the numerous prestigious international conferences such as uTAS, Eurosensors, APCOT, or IEEE IEDM. He is serving as one of the Scientific Advisory Board members of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on microfluidics and point-of-care testing diagnostics since 2016.
[1]. Sthitodhi Ghosh, Kashish Aggarwal, Vinitha T.U., Thinh Nguyen, Jungyoup Han, and Chong H. Ahn, “A new microchannel capillary flow assay (MCFA) platform with lyophilized chemiluminescence reagents for a smartphone-based POCT detecting malaria,” Nature, Microsystem and Nanoengineering (NPG) (2020) 6(5), 1-18, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-019-0108-8. (This paper was viewed over 8,014 and 7 citations as of September 2020)
[2]. V.T. Upaassana, S. Ghosh, A. Milleman, T.H. Nguyen, Chong H. Ahn, "Rapid Saliva Sampling and Microfluidic Capillary Flow Assay (MCFA) lab on a chip (LOC) for point-of-care testing (POCT) of Common Mental Disorders " Lab on a Chip (IF 6.8), 20, 1961-1974 (2020) DOI: 10.1039/d0lc00071j.
[3]. V. Thiyagarajan Upaassana, Sthitodhi Ghosh, Atreyee Chakraborty, M. Eileen Birch, Joseph Pius, Jungyoup Han, Bon Ki Ku, Chong H. Ahn, “Highly Sensitive Lab on a Chip (LOC) Immunoassay for Early Diagnosis of Respiratory Disease Caused by Respirable Crystalline Silica (RCS)”, Analytical Chemistry (IF 6.35), 2019, 91, no. 10, 6652-6660 (“Alice Hamilton Award 2020” from CDC- NIOSH was awarded to this paper.)
[4]. Jin-Woo Choi, Kwang W. Oh, Jennifer H Thomas, William R Heineman, H Brian Halsall, Joseph H Nevin, Arthur J Helmicki, H Thurman Henderson, Chong H. Ahn “An integrated microfluidic biochemical detection system for protein analysis with magnetic bead-based sampling capabilities,” Lab on a Chip 2 (1), 27-30, 2002. Cited by 404
[5]. Chong H. Ahn, Jin-Woo Choi, Gregory Beaucage, Joseph H Nevin, Jeong-Bong Lee, Aniruddha Puntambekar, Jae Y Lee, “Disposable smart lab on a chip for point-of-care clinical diagnostics,”, Proceedings of the IEEE 92 (1), 154-173, 2004. Cited by 601
[6]. Aigars Piruska, Irena Nikcevic, Se Hwan Lee, Chong H Ahn, William R Heineman, Patrick A Limbach, Carl J Seliskar, “The autofluorescence of plastic materials and chips measured under laser irradiation,”, Lab on a Chip 5 (12), 1348-1354, 2005. Cited by 316
[7]. Ching C Hong, Jin W Choi, and Chong H Ahn, “A novel in-plane passive microfluidic mixer with modified Tesla structures,” Lab on a Chip 4 (2), 109-113, 2004. Cited by 362
[8]. W. Jung, J. Han, JW Choi, Chong H. Ahn, “Point-of-care testing (POCT) diagnostic systems using microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technologies,” Microelectronic Engineering 132, 46-57, 2015. Cited by 165
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Commercialization of His Research Work
He has 10 US patents and 1 JP patent issued, 5 US patents under examination, and 2 US provisional patent applications. He has licensed 3 US patents to industries such as Siloam Biosciences and Mico Biomed. Through the licensing of his inventions from the University of Cincinnati, he founded Siloam Biosciences Inc. (www.siloambio.com) in 2004, and the company was acquired by Mico Biomed in October 2018. Optimiser™ product, which was developed from Siloam Biosciences Inc., has been widely used in the industries for advanced immunoassays. The Optimiser™ products improves immunoassays through the power of microfluidics, dramatically improving immunoassay performance across a wide spectrum of measures. His efforts for the commercialization have led him to have the University’s Emerging Entrepreneur Award (2009) and Established Entrepreneur Award (2011) from the University of Cincinnati. He has consulted many faculty/researchers and industries working on the commercialization of microfluidic devices and lab-on-a-chip toward in vitro diagnostics (IVD) products.
His key inventions and pioneering contributions includes (a) a new concept of “Smart Polymer Lab-on-a-Chip” (U.S. Patent 7524464, 2009); (b) A new “Microfluidic Assay Platforms” (U.S. Patent 9919311 B2, 2018) for the point-of-care testing (POCT) clinical diagnostics, and (c) a new concept of “Lab-on-a-tube” (U.S. Patent 8628493, 2014) for the neurosurgical diagnostics of traumatic brain injury (TBI).
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Professional Community Service and Establishment of Research Centers
He has been serving as an Editor of Nature - Microsystems and Nanoengineering (NPG), IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (JMEMS) since 2006, Editorial Boards of Micro and Nano Systems Letters and Biochip Journal, Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, and previously served as the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering (JMM), IEEE Sensors Journal, and Small. He received the Scientific Leadership Award at the 4th Annual BioMEMS and Biomedical Nanotechnology World in 2003, NASA Achievement Award in 2004, and the Best Journal Paper Award of the IEEE Sensors Journal in 2009. He is now a Fellow at the Institute of Physics, and also a Fellow of the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati.
Also, he is currently serving as Director of the Ohio Center for Microfluidic Innovation (OCMI), which is one of the advanced centers for the development of polymer lab-on-a-chips and immunoassay diagnostic products for the industries and universities in Ohio. His efforts and achievements for BioMEMS and microfluidics have greatly contributed the sequential establishments of the ERC cleanroom (which invested around $15.0 M as the Founding Director), the Ohio Center for Microfluidic Innovation (OCMI, invested around $4.0 M), and NSF Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics (CADMIM with UCI, UIC) at the University of Cincinnati.
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