Jerzy Szablowski works on methods to noninvasively interface with the living brain. Before joining Rice, he developed contrast agents for MRI imaging, therapeutics that can be programmed to target different diseases, methods of noninvasive control of specific neural circuits in living organisms. In the Laboratory for Noninvasive Neuroengineering, he continues to innovate in developing methodologies for controlling and monitoring cells in one of the most complex systems in nature – the mammalian brain.

Szablowski received his S.B. from MIT in Biological Engineering, where he published three papers on MRI imaging of neuronal activity and bioelectronics. He then earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Caltech, where he worked on molecular recognition and chemical biology with Peter Dervan and focused on the development programmable DNA-binding therapeutics. His postdoctoral work in Chemical Engineering at Caltech in Mikhail Shapiro’s lab led to the development of Acoustically Targeted Chemogenetics (ATAC), the first fully noninvasive neuromodulation method that also allows for control of neuronal cell populations with spatial, cell-type, molecular, and temporal precision.

Dr. Szablowski received a number of recognitions including the Packard Fellowship, Sloan Research Fellowship, DARPA Young Faculty Award, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a NARSAD Young Investigator Award and others. For his work he received funding from variety of federal and private sources including multiple grants from the NIH, DARPA, ARIA, and multiple private foundations.

Research Statement

There are thousands of unsolved diseases and curing them takes substantial time, effort, and expertise. In our lab we aim to identify methods to noninvasively interface with living tissues to see how their physiology evolves over time, and how to control it for biological research and therapeutic applications. To that end we developed methods to monitor gene expression intact tissues through a simple blood test using custom synthetic serum markers. We also make tools to noninvasively control neuronal activity through the combination of molecular engineering and focused ultrasound. By combining chemical biology, devices, and synthetic biology we establish new paradigms for mechanism and therapy discovery, while enabling previously unavailable in vivo studies.