New Faculty 2015

Newton de Faria, M.ENG. PROGRAM DIRECTOR

The Department of Biomedical Engineering is pleased to announce that Dr. Newton de Faria joined our faculty as the Master of Engineering Program Director, beginning June 16th.  Dr. de Faria earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. He brings nearly two decades of experience working in industry and has held numerous teaching appointments. For the last decade he has focused on medical devices, analytical devices and pharmaceutical application markets in the biomedical and health industries. Recently, he has worked as the senior district sales manager and strategic accounts manager for National Instruments Corporation. He has taught BME 6500, Biomedical Instrumentation, at the University of Connecticut.

Ilana Brito, PROFESSOR

Professor Ilana Brito will join BME as an assistant professor in July 2016. Her main research interests involve understanding how microbes (and their genes) are transmitted among individuals and between individuals and their environments. This extends not only to pathogens but also to the commensal organisms that inhabit different human body sites. To this end, she launched the Fiji Community Microbiome Project, which surveyed 300 individuals living in small village communities in the Fiji Islands about family and social networks, lifestyle and health history. Brito also retrieved microbiome samples from body sites most exposed to endogenous bacteria and the environments in which they live. She combined single-cell genomics, metagenomics and 16S surveys to investigate some of the major differences between these microbiomes and those in the Human Microbiome Project. Understanding the dynamics and factors that govern endogenous bacterial transmission will enhance epidemiological knowledge and expand our capacity to use bacteria therapeutically. Coined as the “The Biologist Who Flew to Fiji for Feces,” by OZY, Brito is noted as a risk-taking, rising star.