Z. Hugh Fan

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Professor
Current Faculty
Current member
Advisors: 
Office location: 
223 Larson Hall
Office fax: 
(352) 392-7303
Office phone: 
(352) 846-3021
Email: 
Education

Degree: 
Doctorate
Program of study: 
Chemistry
Graduation year: 
1994

Dr. Hugh Fan is a professor of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Department of Chemistry at the University of Florida (UF).  He was an E.T.S. Walton visiting professor in Biomedical Diagnostics Institute at Dublin City University, Ireland in 2009. Prior to joining UF, Dr. Fan was a Principal Scientist at ACLARA BioSciences Inc. (Mountain View, CA) and was previously a Member of the Technical Staff at Sarnoff Corp. (Princeton, NJ).

Dr. Fan's research interests include microfluidics, BioMEMS (Biomedical MicroElectroMechanical Systems), sensors, and bioengineering. His research focus is to develop microfluidics and BioMEMS technologies and apply them to biological applications. Microfluidics is promising to reach the holy grail of “lab-on-a-chip”. In analogy to shrinking a computer from the size of a room in the 1950s to a laptop today, instruments for chemical and biological analyses may be miniaturized using modern microfabrication technology. Potential applications of the portable, miniaturized devices may include point-of-care testing (e.g., in emergency rooms), environmental monitoring, and detection of biowarfare agents in the field.

Dr. Fan is a recipient of Fraunhofer-Bessel Research Award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.  He received his B. Sc. from Yangzhou Teachers' College (now a part of Yangzhou University) in China and his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta in Canada. Dr. Fan worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Ames Laboratory of US Department of Energy at Iowa State University. He joined UF in 2003 after more than eight years of industrial experience.