Iwijn De Vlaminck | Cornell Engineering

Biography

Iwijn De Vlaminck is an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell University. Iwijn’s research is focused on the development of precision medicine technologies to monitor and study infectious and immune related disease. His research has led to noninvasive liquid biopsies to diagnose organ transplant rejection, urinary tract infection, blood-borne infection and complications of stem cell transplantation. He developed methods to spatially map the microbiome and the transcriptome. Iwijn’s research was recognized with the NIH New Innovator Award, the Noyce Foundation Assistant Professorship in the Life Sciences and a Rainin Foundation Synergy Award. He received teaching excellence awards from the College of Engineering in 2017 and 2022. He is a co-founder of Kanvas Biosciences.

Our mission is to improve human health through the development of precision medicine technologies to study and diagnose infectious, immune and microbiome-associated disease. Our research brings approaches from engineering, biophysics, and computational biology to genomics and medicine.

We pursue research in two areas:

Liquid biopsies for infectious and immune-mediated disease: We investigate technologies and applications of circulating cell-free DNA in diagnostic medicine. We have developed molecular assays to obtain rich, sequence information from cell-free DNA in blood and urine, and computational methods to classify infectious and immune-mediated disease from cell-free DNA ‘omics data. We have demonstrated applications of these technologies in the monitoring of infection, host tissue injury due to infection, COVID-19, solid-organ transplant rejection, and graft-versus-host disease.
Digital spatial profiling of microbiomes and infection in complex tissues: We investigate single-cell and spatial sequencing technologies to study infection in native, complex tissues and to spatially profile bacterial microbiomes and host-microbiome interactions.

For regularly updated information, visit the De Vlaminck Lab website pages:

Visit our lab website for more information about our current research projects.

Research Interests

Bioengineering
Biomedical Engineering
Molecular and Cellular Engineering
Computational Science and Engineering
Systems and Synthetic Biology

Select Publications

David W. McKellar, Madhav Mantri, Meleana Hinchman, John S.L. Parker, Praveen Sethupathy, Benjamin D. Cosgrove, Iwijn De Vlaminck, Spatial mapping of the total transcriptome by in situ polyadenylation, Nature Biotechnology (2022).
Madhav Mantri, Meleana M. Hinchman, David W. McKellar, Michael F. Z. Wang, Shaun T. Cross, John S. L. Parker, Iwijn De Vlaminck, Spatiotemporal transcriptomics reveals pathogenesis of viral myocarditis, Nature Cardiovascular Research (2022).
Hao Shi, Qiaojuan Shi, Benjamin Grodner, Warren Zipfel, Ilana Brito, Iwijn De Vlaminck, Highly Multiplexed Spatial Mapping of Microbial Communities, Nature (2020).
Alexandre Pellan Cheng, Matthew Pellan Cheng, Joan Sesing Lenz, Kaiwen Chen, Philip Burnham, Kaitlyn Marie Timblin, Jose Luis Orejas, Emily Silverman, Francisco M. Marty, Jerome Ritz, Iwijn De Vlaminck. Cell-free DNA Profiling Informs Major Complications of Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences (2022).

Iwijn De Vlaminck's Google Scholar

Select Awards and Honors

Dorothy and Fred Chau, M.S. 74 Excellence in Teaching Award 2022
BMES-CMBE Rising Star Junior Faculty Award 2021
Research Excellence Award Cornell College of Engineering 2020
Rainin Foundation Synergy Award 2019
Inspiring mentor Merrill Scholars program, Cornell University 2019
Robert ’55 and Vanne ’57 Cowie Excellence in Teaching Award 2017
NIH Director’s New Innovator Award 2017
Robert N. Noyce Assistant Professorship in Life Science and Technology, selected by Provost 2015