Biography
Thomas Matula is the Director of the Center for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound (CIMU) at UW’s Applied Physics Lab. He received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1992 where he studied the propagation and diffraction of flexural waves in membranes and plates. He then spent several years working on Sonoluminescence – the emission of light from cavitating bubbles. For this work he was awarded the Presidential Early Career (PECASE) Award. From there he studied ultrasound contrast microbubbles used to enhance diagnostic ultrasound images. Later, he got involved in using cavitation for industrial uses, including food processing, and most recently, fragmenting DNA and chromatin for downstream PCR and NGS assays. This work led to a startup company that is commercializing a high-throughput sample preparation (PIXUL) tool for the genomic and epigenetic fields. He is currently also looking to develop cavitation treatment for various diseases, as well as an ultrasound-based cell sorter.
Specializations
Interaction between acoustic waves and bubbles; Therapeutic ultrasound; Device development
Affiliations
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Fellow
Acoustical Society of America -
Senior Member
IEEE
Education
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Ph.D., Physics, 1993
Washington State University -
MS, Physics, 1990
Washington State University -
BS, Physics, 1988
California State University, Fresno