Faculty Directory

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).

• MEMS and microsystems technology
• Microfluidic systems
• Additive manufacturing at the micro/nano scales
• Disposable diagnostics
• Scalable nanomedicine development

Microhydrocyclones for Scalable Exosome Isolation

Synthetic Biogenesis of Eukaryotic Cells

Continuous-Flow Microfluidic Synthesis of Liposomal Nanomedicines

Trap Array Chips Enabling Rapid, Automated, and Portable Antibiotic Resistance Screening

ENME476 Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS)

ENME481/740 Lab-on-a-Chip Microsystems

ENME441 Mechatronics and the Internet of Things (IoT)

Recent Publications (see https://mml.umd.edu or https://www.researcherid.com/rid/A-2891-2011 for a full listing)

1. J. Lee, E.H. Benke, I.M. White, D.L. DeVoe, “Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) for reagent storage and controlled release in thermoplastic microfluidics,” Lab Chip, 26, 897, 2026.

2. E. Rosenfeld, K. Pacheco, E. Benke, I.M. White, D.L. DeVoe, “A portable and low-cost fluorescence reader for near-patient nucleic acid amplification assays,” Biomed Microdev, 28, 14, 2026.

3. E. Salazar-Cavazos, D. Jia, Y. Missolo-Koussou, A. Kenet, S. Achar, H. Dada, T. Kondo, A. Krishnan, N. Taylor, P. Jiang, J. Waterfall, D.L. DeVoe, G. Altan-Bonnet, “Stochasticity in cancer immunotherapy stems from rare but functionally-critical Spark T cells,” Cell, 189, 1-12, 2026.

4. J. Lai, H. Sobhani, K.K. Coleman, S.-H.S. Tai, F. Hong, I.S. Maldonado, Y. Esparza, K.M. McPhaul, S. Zhu, D.L. DeVoe, J.R. Ortiz, S. Chen, T. Yellin, J.M. Carreno, F. Krammer, B.J. Cowling, A. Gordon, W.H. Chen, J. Srebric, D.K. Milton, “Evaluating modes of influenza transmission (EMIT-2): challenges of a controlled human influenza virus infection transmission trial (CHIVITT),” PLOS Pathogens, 22, e1013153, 2026.

5. S. Mehraji, N.H. Pirolli, R. Nowak, S.M. Jay, D.L. DeVoe, “Therapeutic extracellular vesicle preparation via electrophoretic enrichment and counterflow microdialysis,” Lab Chip, 26, 353-363, 2026.

6. S. Mehraji, D.L. DeVoe, “Multilayer counterflow microdialysis chips for scalable buffer exchange and sample purification,” Anal Chem, 97, 15502-15509, 2025.

7. K. Pacheco, L. DeVoe, D.L. DeVoe, “Fabrication of superhydrophobic glass surfaces by hierarchical micro powder blasting-assisted silanization,” Langmuir, 41, 22433-22440, 2025.

8. P. Bhattacharya, D. Rastogi, S. Mehraji, J. Camarero de la Torre, A. Mehta, S. Tai, A. Hasani, A. Smith, W. Smith, A. Asa-Awuku, D.K. Milton, D.L. DeVoe, “3D printed microcyclones for enhanced collection, separation, and recovery of sub-micrometer bioaerosols,” Sens Act B, 444, 138349, 2025.

9. S.R. Srimathi, M.A. Ignacio, M. Rife, S. Tai, D.K. Milton, M.A. Scull, D.L. DeVoe, “Microfluidic digital focus assays for the quantification of infectious influenza virus,” Lab Chip, 25, 2004-2016, 2025.

10. M. Yeh, E. Salazar-Cavazos, A. Krishnan, G. Altan-Bonnet,  D.L. DeVoe, “Probing T-cell activation in nanoliter tumor co-cultures using membrane displacement trap arrays,” Integrative Biology, 16, zyae014, 2024.