Michael Hughes
Prof. michael hughes Professor Biomedical Engineering

Contact Information
michael.hughes@ku.ac.ae 971 2 312 5212

Biography

Michael Pycraft Hughes was appointed Professor of Biomedical Engineering ay Khalifa University.  He received his MEng and PhD in Electronic Engineering at the University College of North Wales, UK; his PhD was undertaken in conjunction with the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, USA.  His previous appointment was in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Surrey; appointed as Lecturer in 1999 and rising to Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director for the Centre for Biomedical Engineering in 2008. 

He has 30 years' research experience in the development of cellular bioelectronics, in particular the use of electrical fields (dielectrophoresis) to determine and exploit the properties of cells.  His research group has produced more papers on dielectrophoresis than any other in the discipline; he is the author of two books, over 85 journal papers, 5 patents and approximately 90 refereed conference papers, which have been cited over 6500 times. His current h-index is 41 (Google Scholar). From 2008-13 he was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience, and has served on the Administrative Committees of the IEEE, EMBS and Nanotechnology Council. His work has led to the founding of two startup companies (DEPtech and Deparator) to commercialise bioelectronic technology.

His current main research line is in the interconnection of different electrical properties, in order to understand the role these properties (which we term the electrome) play in cell funciton, in both health and disease.


Education
  • PhD, University of Wales, 1995
  • MEng Electronic Engineering, University of Wales Bangor, 1992

Teaching
  • Functional Biomechanics (BMED322)
  • bmed321 Mechanical Engineering for Biomedical Engineers

Affiliated Research Institutes/Centers

Research
Research Interests
  • Electromics - the study of the effects of charges and electrical potentials on cell function
  • Dielectrophoresis - using electric fields to analyze and sort cells