Ryan McNaughton (Zhang lab) Ryan received his BS in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University in 2016, and enrolled the following academic year in BU’s Mechanical Engineering PhD program. Prior to joining the Neurophotonics Center, he spent the better part of his undergraduate research examining methods of impedance sensing on biological tissues and applications of diatoms in dye sensitized solar cells. Ryan continues to work in Professor Xin Zhang’s Laboratory for Microsystems Technology and has spent the majority of his graduate research focusing on the live culture of primary hippocampal neuron cells on polymer substrates. For his future work, he intends to continue culturing neurons to examine the complex cellular and subcellular mechanisms that are influenced by their physical environment. Ryan expects to graduate from the Mechanical Engineering PhD program by May 2021.