Our Lab
Our lab comprises undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students, all with a variety of backgrounds and research interests at the intersection of biomedical engineering, data science and medicine.
Meet the Team
Matthew Ward
Matthew P. Ward received his B.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering and Ph.D. degree in Neural Engineering from Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN). He is currently Research Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN) and Adj. Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Gastrointestinal Motility and Neurogastroenterology Unit of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Ward’s BioCom Lab develops and translates technologies that enable persistent, bidirectional communication with the peripheral and central nervous system through implanted and external neural interfaces.
Lab Director
Sarwat Amin
PhD Student
Sarwat Amin is a first year PhD student. She had her BSc degree from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. During her masters at the same university, she worked with phonocardiogram signals as a marker for cardiomyopathy and biometrics. Her research interest lies in biomedical applications of Machine Learning. Her work involves applying deep learning and signal processing techniques in decoding the vagal nerve responses. Outside of research she is a busy mother of a 3-year-old. She hopes to learn crocheting and master the perfect cup of tea someday.
Jongcheon Lim
PhD Student
Jongcheon Lim is a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering. He received his BS in Materials Science & Engineering from Yonsei Universiy in 2015. He received an MS in Bio & Brain Engineering from KAIST in 2017. He is interested in developing a novel materials design principle for better neural interface. When he is not working, Jongcheon draws things, travels around, reads books.
Ying Shen
PhD Student
Ying is a first-year Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering. Before joining Purdue, she received her Bachelor's degree in
Biomedical Engineering at the University of Sydney, with a minor in Electrical Engineering. She did her research master's at the
same university and worked on electrophysiological analysis for neural degeneration in the human cochlea. Her research interests
lie in invasive neural interface development and the neural response-function analysis of the vagus nerve. During her working time,
she is a rat killer, bug maker, and sometimes debate master. Aside from academics, she loves to train Java (her cat) to use the toilet
and play fetch. She is also an outdoor enthusiast.
_heic.png)
Peter Zoss
Masters Student
Peter Zoss is currently an undergraduate in Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University with a minor in electrical and computer engineering. His interests klie in Brain-Computer Interface applications, Virtual Reality advancements and treatments, and noninvasive medical device technology to help improve the standard quality of life.
LeRayah Neely-Brown
Masters Student
LeRayah Neely-Brown is a first year Biomedical Engineering Master’s student. She received her BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2021. Her interests lie in utilizing computational neuroscience to understand neuronal signal processing from sub-cellular to network/system-level dynamics. She aims to analyze and phenotype action potentials via biophysical and computation modeling for the vagus nerve. In her spare time, LeRayah enjoys listening to music, going to museums, and styling others’ makeup.
Maria Feucht
Medical Student
Maria Feucht is a medical student at Indiana University School of Medicine. She
graduated with a B.Sc. degree in Engineering from Baylor University. Maria is interested in the clinical applications of engineering technology and specifically in neural interfaces. Her work in the BioCom Laboratory focuses on the characterization of vagus nerve response to stimulation in patients with epilepsy. In her free time, Maria enjoys reading, running, and music.
Damen Wilson
Undergraduate Researcher
Damen is a junior studying Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Electrical & Computer Engineering at Purdue. He has industry experience with an internship with Stryker and a year long co-op with Cook Research. Prior to joining BioCom Laboratory, he completed a year of research in Linnes Lab at Purdue under Dr. Linnes. He intends on continuing research into his future with plans of going to graduate school. Currently in BioCom Laboratory, Damen is working on software development for algorithms aimed at characterizing and predicting physiological responses of the autonomic nervous system non-invasively.
Shreya Kurdukar
Undergraduate Researcher
Shreya Kurdukar is an undergraduate student studying Biomedical Engineering, with minors in Computer Science and Statistics. Interested in the intersection of medicine and technology, Shreya enjoys exploring fields including medical devices, bioinformatics, and digital healthcare. In the BioCom Laboratory, Shreya’s current research focuses on biophysical modeling to understand the relationship between fiber morphology and CNAP shape. Outside of schoolwork, she is part of the Purdue Engineering Student Council and dances on Purdue’s bhangra dance team!
Rama Coimbatore
Undergraduate Researcher
Rama Coimbatore is an undergraduate student pursuing a major in biomedical engineering on the pre-med track and a minor in material science engineering. She is interested in research surrounding personalized healthcare technologies, computational medicine, and biomedical data science. Her current work in BioCom Lab consists of visualizing vagal nerve activity in order to understand its role in the treatment of gastroparesis. Outside of academics, she serves on the executive board of Purdue Society of Women Engineers and enjoys playing the violin.
Meredith Hedtke
Undergraduate Researcher
Meredith Hedtke is an undergraduate student studying Biomedical Engineering. She is helping to develop software that allows neuroscientists and engineers to interact with complex nerve morphometry data in an intuitive manner to study nerve structure and fiber organization, to design new neural interfaces, and to simulate extracellular nerve activity from populations of axons.
Nathan Govindarajan
Undergraduate Researcher
Nathan is a junior in Computer Engineering. Before joining BioComLab, he held 2 internships in the software engineering industry. His interests mainly lie in applying software engineering into applications of Brain Machine Interface. He intends to continue in research and plans to attend graduate school. In BioComLab, his current projects entail creating a heat map based on where the user’s gaze lies using Unity and Varjo’s API as well as synchronizing data streams between the Varjo VR headset and the ADInstruments’ ECG. His hobbies include playing any sports, particularly playing basketball at the CoRec.
Angie Baron
Undergraduate Researcher
Youssef Beshay
Undergraduate Researcher
My name is Angie Natalia Barón Gómez, I am in my fifth year of bioengineering major at Universidad Santiago de Cali, I am undertaking an international research internship at Purdue. my research interests are Neuroscience, Neuroengineering, image and signal processing. I have been working on research in Cali, Colombia on depression detection using pattern recognition and machine learning to solve
biomedical problems. I hope to continue my studies doing a postgraduate degree deepening in the areas of interest. Currently, in the BioCom lab, I am working with virtual reality for the treatment of opioid use disorder
My name is Youssef Beshay. I am from Cairo, Egypt. I am currently a senior in Biomedical Engineering pursuing a minor in Materials Science Engineering.
I have various interests such as biomaterials, biomechanics, materials processing, and material microstructure. Upon graduation, I would like to work with prosthetics and other assistive medical devices. I also have a passion for studying pain modulation and management, and this interests me in BioComLab. My area of research in this lab is tissue clearing to study innervation patterns of the murine knee joint with the goal of alleviating pain in models and patients with post traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA).