John M. Maher, Ph.D.
Interim Director

Dr. John Maher is the vice president for research at Marshall University and the executive director of the Marshall University Research Corporation. In August 2011, he was appointed interim director of the Marshall Institute for Interdisciplinary Research.

From 2003-07, Dr. Maher was the executive director of the Chemical Alliance Zone, a statewide collaborative devoted to economic development in the chemical and allied sectors.

Previously, he worked for 21 years at the Union Carbide Corporation, serving in a broad range of technical and managerial assignments in areas as diverse as catalysis research, plant technology support, intellectual property management, capital project execution and new business development.

Dr. Maher received an A.B. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in organic/organometallic chemistry from Harvard University.

 

Jingwei Xie, Ph.D.
Research Scientist

Dr. Jingwei Xie joined the institute in early 2011.

He received his B.S. (1999) and M.S. (2002) from Nanjing University of Technology in China. He earned his doctorate in chemical and biomolecular engineering from the National University of Singapore. Dr. Xie’s doctoral research was focused on the development of biomedical devices using electrohydrodynamic atomization technique. After graduation, he joined the Xia group at Washington University in St. Louis as a postdoctoral fellow, working on the fabrication of nanostructured materials by electrospinning technique, with a focus on their biomedical applications in peripheral nerve injury repair, tendon-to-bone insertion repair, differentiation of stem cells, wound healing and drug delivery. He is the co-inventor on three patents, was co-investigator of a National Institutes of Health-funded pilot project and has co-authored more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Dr. Xie’s group at the institute focuses on the development of novel biomaterials for applications in nanoregenerative medicine and drug/gene delivery.

 

Bing Ma, M.D., Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Bing Ma joined the institute in 2011 to work in the lab of Dr. Jingwei Xie, where his research interests include the application of nanofibers to wound healing.

He received his B.Sc. in medicine (1992), and his M.Sc. (2001) and Ph.D. (2005), both in wound repair, from the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing, China. While at the university, he studied the molecular mechanism of postburn hypertrophic scar. In 2005, he opened the Department of Burn Injury and Plastic Surgery at the First Affiliated Hospital of Chengdu Medical College, where they developed special techniques for applying microsurgery on wounds from burn injuries, chronic wounds, trauma, tumors and congenital conditions.

 

Jiang Jiang, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Jiang Jiang’s research interests include micro- and nanofabrication, cell-material interaction, tissue engineering and drug delivery.

He received his B.S. from the Department of Physics at Shandong University and continued his Ph.D. study in the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His doctoral thesis was mainly focused on the biocompatibility of plasma treated silicon. He received his Ph.D. in June 2009, and in 2012 joined Dr. Jingwei Xie’s lab at MIIR, where his research centers on the development of nanostructured materials, with a focus on their biomedical applications.

 

David Edward Bartlett
Undergraduate Student

Mr. Bartlett is an undergraduate student in Marshall’s Department of Biological Sciences. He will graduate in May 2013 with a B.S. in biomedical science. His interests include regenerative medicine, metabolism and endocrinology. His research project is mainly focused on the nanofiber fabrication for rotator cuff injury repair.