Luciana Custer

Luciana Custer is a Graduate Assistant at the Ellison Medical Institute and a 3rd year PhD student in Biomedical Engineering advised by Dr. Andrea Armani. Their present research focus marries light physics to biological application by the development of an optically-actuated voltage-modulating-and-reporting molecular device for high spatiotemporal resolution manipulation and imaging of bioelectric fields.

Luciana believes in the life-changing capabilities of interdisciplinary research; accordingly, their areas of familiarity are diverse and include tissue engineering, genetic manipulation and protein characterization, biotechnological upstream and downstream processing, advanced manufacturing and material characterization techniques, electrochemical sensor development and circuit design, neuroelectric recording and analysis, and synthetic chemistry. They also have several years of lab management experience.

Luciana is a proud community college alumnus with an A.S. Biotechnology and A.S. Bioengineering from Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth NH. They graduated with a B.S. Bioengineering from the University of New Hampshire, and currently enjoy tenure as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow as they pursue their PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California. Outside of work, Luciana pursues a wildly oscillating roster of hobbies including crochet, digital art, blacksmithing, clothing customization and costume design, running, and investigation of niche online subcultures.