Team - Gaborski NanoBio Materials Laboratory

Tom Gaborski – Lab Director and Principal Investigator

Gaborski Cleaning

Tom Gaborski, Ph.D.

Professor and Department Head, 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 a founder of a nanomaterials 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 understanding leukocyte recruitment and the biophysics of adhesion molecule mobility and surface localization by developing quantitative fluorescence microscopy techniques. It was during this work that he became involved with the life science applications of a novel class of ultrathin membranes, leading to the founding of SiMPore in 2007, where he helped raise two rounds of investment. While at SiMPore, he was the principal investigator on three NIH small business innovative research grants and brought several products to market. After serving as President of SiMPore, Tom 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. He and his laboratory have been funded by six institutes at the National Institutes of Health, multiple directorates at the National Science Foundation, New York State, the Hopeman Foundation, and two industry partners.

When not working, Tom likes to run, backpack, bike, ski, and attend to his mini-orchard.

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