John Robertson

My professional journey has been long ... unexpected ...deeply fulfilling. The journey began in earnest with my training as a translational medical scientist (veterinarian, pathologist) and over the years included stints in pharmaceutical development, teaching veterinary pathology and oncology at Virginia Tech. Eventually I landed my 'dream job' as a research professor in biomedical engineering.

My major interests are detection and treatment of kidney diseases and cancer, development of medical devices and tests for disease detection, improving dialysis therapy, and helping my team develop electroporation-based therapies for destruction of human and canine malignant brain tumors like glioblastoma.

My research focuses on Raman chemometric urinalysis — a means to stage chronic kidney disease and to screen urine for molecular profiles associated with bladder cancer. This was co-developed with my brilliant colleagues, Ryan Senger in biological systems engineering and Pang Du in statistics.

Another focus area is in the field of automated dialysis therapy — a technology to individualize/improve hemodialysis — that I work on with Senger and Tom Diller in mechanical engineering. Additionally, as part of a fantastic team led by Rafael Davalos, John Rossmeisl, and Scott Verbridge; all of biomedical engineering, we study non-thermal ablation of tumors.