Zachary Gagnon

Assistant Professor

Phone: 410-516-8489
Office: MD 220A
Email: zgagnon1@jhmi.edu

Education

• Postdoctoral, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 2009
• Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2009
• M.S., University of Notre Dame, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, 2005
• B.S., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Chemical Engineering, 2003

Research Interests

We develop new ways of utilizing electrokinetic and microfluidic phenomena for biological and biomedical applications. In particular we are interested in how electric fields interact with fluid interfaces to induce precise injection and selective mass transport, with the goal being to apply electro-fluidic phenomena to protein purification, cell migration and rare cell isolation applications. We are also using microfluidic devices to study cell signaling. Specifically, we are interested in how living migratory cells interpret and respond to shear stress (flowtaxis), voltage gradients (electrotaxis) and chemical gradients (chemotaxis), and the interactions between these stimuli when multiple signals are applied simultaneously. We employ a range of disciplines in our lab including fluid mechanics, microfabrication, electrokinetics (e.g. dielectrophoresis, ac electro-osmosis), cell biology (cell culture, cell expression systems, cell migration assays), electrodynamics (impedance spectroscopy) and applied mathematics.

Selected Publications

• Gagnon, Z., Mazur, J., and Chang, H.C., “Integrated AC Electrokinetic Cell Separation in a Closed-loop Device” Lab Chip 10, 718-726 (2010)
• Gagnon, Z., Chang, H-C., “AC Electrothermal Electro-Osmosis”, Applied Physics Letters 94, 024101 (2009) [Selected for the Virtual J of Nanoscale Science & Technology and for the Virtual J of Biological Physics Research]
• Gagnon, Z., Chang, H-C., “Dielectrophoresis of Ionized Gas Micro-bubbles: Dipole Reversal due to Diffuse Double-Layer Polarization”, Applied Physics Letters 93, 224101 (2008)
• Gagnon, Z., Senapati, S., Gordon, Chang, H-C., “Dielectrophoretic Detection and Quantification of Hybridized DNA Molecules on Nano-Genetic Particles”, Electrophoresis, 29, 4808-4812 (2008) [Selected as a Fast Track cover article in Electrophoresis]
• Gagnon, Z., Gordon, J., Sengupta, S. and Chang, H.-C., "Bovine Red Blood Cell Starvation Age Discriminatin through a Glutaraldehyde Amplified Dielectrophoretic Approach with Buffer Selection and Membrane Cross- Linking", Electrophoresis, 29, 2272 (2008)