People

Professor Ranji received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007, where her doctoral research focused on fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging of cardiovascular diseases. She subsequently joined the Sanford Burnham Institute for Medical Research/UC San Diego Bioengineering as a postdoctoral associate, studying stem cell differentiation for cardiac repair. From 2009 to 2020, she was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee before joining Florida Atlantic University in 2020. She is now a Professor in both Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and serves as Associate Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Professor Ranji’s overarching research goal is to enable early, quantitative disease diagnosis, translate benchtop technologies into clinical applications, and assess the efficacy of emerging therapies. She closely collaborates with medical school scientists to advance translational biomedical research. A central focus of Professor Ranji’s work is the real-time monitoring of mitochondrial redox state, which has the potential to provide clinicians with a direct means of detecting the onset and progression of organ dysfunction at the bedside. Using custom-designed optical tools, Professor Ranji has investigated redox state and energy homeostasis in organs including the eye, lung, and kidney, both ex vivo and longitudinally in vivo.

Parisa Nategh
Summer 2022-Present
PhD Candidate in Electrical Engineering

Parisa is a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering, specializing in advanced optical system design and biomedical imaging. Her research focuses on the development and implementation of integrated multimodal imaging systems, including Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and fluorescence imaging. Her work utilizes these technologies alongside rigorous data and statistical analysis to characterize metabolic and structural changes in complex pathological states. Prior to her doctoral studies, Parisa earned her M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tehran (2020) and her B.Sc. from K. N. Toosi University of Technology (2017). Her previous background includes the design of active microfluidic systems, AI-driven chemical detection using computer vision, and the development of 8-channel EEG instrumentation for brain-computer interface research.

Mehrnoosh Neghabi
Summer 2022-Present
PhD Candidate in Electrical Engineering

Mehrnoosh received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran in 2015 and 2018. She was a researcher at Isfahan Neuro Technology Laboratory from 2015 to 2018. She also worked as a research expert at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences between 2018 and 2020. In her master thesis, she focused on feature extraction algorithms in SSVEP-based BCI systems. Her research interests include biological image processing, biological signal processing, brain-computer interfaces, pattern recognition, and biomedical instrumentation.

Corey Naar
Summer 2025-Present
MS in Biomedical Engineering

Corey received an associate’s degree in health science in 2018 and a bachelor’s degree in biology (magna cum laude) in 2020 and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in biomedical engineering with a minor in artificial intelligence. His academic interests lie at the intersection of biology, engineering, and data-driven methodologies, with a strong focus on advancing medicine and translational science. He has participated in oncopathological research at the FAU Davie campus.

Buse Nur Ceyhan
Spring 2022-Spring 2024
MS in Biomedical Engineering

Shalaka Konjalwar
Spring 2022-Spring 2024
MS in Biomedical Engineering

Soudeh Mostaghimi
Jan 2019-May 2021
MS in Electrical Engineering

Mark Jacobs
MS Student in Electrical Engineering
2012

Laura Michelle Bersie
BS in Mechanical Engineering
Electrical Engineering Department
2012