DeVoe, Don
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Maryland Robotics Center
Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices
Don DeVoe is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Idea Factory at the University of Maryland, College Park. He holds affiliate faculty appointments in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering and Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and is a faculty member within the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices. Dr. DeVoe completed his B.S. (1991) and M.S. (1993) degrees in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, and received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1997 with a dissertation focused on piezoelectric MEMS sensors and actuators. His current research interests target the development of microfluidic systems for applications in clinical diagnostics, cancer immunology, nanomedicine, and aerovirology. His research has been supported by NIH, NSF, DARPA, ONR, NIST, and diverse industry partners, and he has supervised more than 35 doctoral students, many of whom now hold faculty positions in the U.S. and Asia or technical leadership roles in industry and government laboratories. He has authored over 300 peer-reviewed publications, and is an inventor on eight U.S. patents. In 2000 he co-founded Calibrant Biosystems, a biomarker discovery company leveraging technology licensed from the University of Maryland. He later founded Io Scientific to commercialize active nanomaterials developed in his lab for enhanced protein analysis by mass spectrometry. He received a Wilson H. Elkins Professorship from the University of Maryland in 2020, and was named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher in 2023. He is also a recipient of the 2013 University System of Maryland Regents Award for Research. Dr. DeVoe was recognized with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation in 1999 for advances in microsystems technology, and was named a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Science in 2008. He served for over a decade as a Senior Editor for the IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (J. MEMS), and as a Board Member and Treasurer for the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).