Julieane Sempionatto

WEBSITE(S)| Personal Website

Dr. Juliane Sempionatto received her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Sao Paulo (USP), M.S. in Material Science Engineering from Sao Paulo State University (UNESP), and Ph.D. degree (with highest honors) in Nanoengineering from the University of California San Diego (UCSD). She was a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 2021 to 2023. In April 2024, she joined the Rice University, Houston, Texas, faculty, where she is the James J. Truchard endowed chair Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a member of the Digital Health Initiative.

Dr. Sempionatto is the recipient of the prestigious Siebel Scholar Award (class of 2021), the IUPAC Young Chemist Award (2022), MIT 35 under 35 Latin America (2022), and the Distinguished Female Scientist Brazil (2024). She has been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher and has been a keynote and plenary speaker at several conferences.

Her research is related to developing wearable and point-of-care biosensors capable of real-time non-invasive monitoring of medical-relevant biomarkers. Dr Sempionatto designed and built biosensors to measure chemical analytes in sweat, saliva, tears, interstitial fluid, wound fluid, urine, and blood. The focus of her research is the development of multimodal and multiplex wearable devices, meaning that several sensor modalities, including chemical sensors and physiological sensors (heart rate, blood pressure), are fabricated in the same platform to measure comprehensive information about health status. Moreover, Dr Sempionatto has a great interest in new surface chemistry for biosensors, energy harvesters, microfluidic devices, new materials and electrode fabrication, miniaturized electronics, and machine learning.

Research Areas

Development of wearable electrochemical biosensors for the continuous and non-invasive monitoring of analytes; Wearable energy harvester devices; New electrode materials and fabrication; Flexible, stretchable, and conformal substrates for epidermal biosensors; Wearable microfluidic platforms with actuators for flow control, mixing, delivery, and storage of biofluids; Animal model; Implantable biosensors; Machine learning

Education

2021_Ph.D. Nanoengineering, University of California, San Diego

2015_M.Sc. Materials Science and Technology, Sao Paulo State University – UNESP, Brazil

2012_B.Sc. Chemistry, University of Sao Paulo – USP, Brazil

Honors & Awards

2023 ScientistA Brazil 2024. Distinguished female scientists

2022 Rising Star in Engineering in Health - Johns Hopkins and Columbia University

2022 MIT 35 Innovators under 35 Latin America

2022 IUPAC-Solvay International Young Chemists Award

2022 Chemosensors Ph.D. Thesis Award

2021 Next Generation Faculty Symposium Stanford.Berkeley.UCSF

2021 SEAC Presentation Award

2021 Siebel Scholar

2020 Baxter Young Investigator Award

2020 Grad SLAM USCD

2019 Metrohm Young Chemist Award – Finalist

2018 Johnson & Johnson QuickFire Challenge – Finalist

2017 Grad SLAM USCD (Research communication competition) – Finalist

2015 Center for Wearable Sensors Award – First Place Poster Pitch Competition

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