Oliver Graudejus

Oliver Graudejus' early research focused on synthesis and characterization of inorganic fluorides with transition metals in high oxidation states using high pressure and high temperature methods. In 1996, he received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship and joined the research group of Professor Neil Bartlett at the University of California, Berkeley. The research focused on room temperature synthesis of fluorides in anhydrous HF as a solvent. In 1999, he joined Novellus Systems, a supplier of equipment to the semiconductor industry. He worked as a key account technologist on chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition and atomic layer deposition. In 2006, he moved to New Jersey and joined Princeton University. In collaboration with Professor Sigurd Wagner, and Professor Barclay Morrison III at Columbia University, he developed a stretchable microelectrode array (sMEA) for in vitro brain injury research. The work was funded by grants from National Institutes of Health (NIH), the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology and the New Jersey Commission on Brain Injury Research.

In 2009, he joined ASU. He founded the company BioMedical Sustainable Elastic Electronic Devices (BMSEED) to commercialize the sMEA technology, with a particular focus on biomedical applications. He was the Principle Investigator (PI) on a Phase I SBIR grant that was awarded to BMSEED in July 2014 from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The goal of this SBIR was to produce sMEAs at cost, quantities, and quality required for commercial applications. He is the PI on another Phase I SBIR grant award from NINDS (2016) to extend the application of the sMEA technology to interface directly with the brain in vivo. The ultimate goal of this research is to more accurately determine the location of the epileptogenic zones in the brain before a patient suffering from epilepsy undergoes resection surgery. He was selected by NIH to join the Coulter College Commercialization Innovation (C3i) program in 2015, and the NIH I-Corps program in 2017.

Between 2009 and 2016, Dr. Graudejus taught General Chemistry (CHM113+114), Organic Chemistry (CHM231+233), and Analytical Chemistry (CHM325, 326+327). He worked with a team of researchers in the Department of Psychology  to improve student engagement and retention by increasing the students’ Future-Self-Connectedness (FSC). He is a co-investigator on a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) that funds the extension of this research.