Marco Machado

Marco Machado is a graduate student in chemical engineering rethinking how molecular interactions translate into physiological outcomes for cancer diagnostics and diabetes therapeutics. For bladder cancer, he implements continuum reaction-diffusion modeling in MATLAB to demonstrate that localized biomarker sensing achieves 10⁴ to 10⁵-fold signal enhancement compared to dilute urine measurements, establishing design criteria for in situ chemical imaging devices. He processes experimental data from nanosensor-functionalized catheters to validate predictions and quantify spatially dependent concentration changes. He also developed the IM3PACT glucoregulatory model to predict therapeutic responses across species by solving coupled differential equations with parameter-fitting optimization, enabling cross-species translation of therapeutics. As a MathWorks Fellow, Marco will expand these frameworks to accelerate discovery and evaluation of next-generation biomedical devices. His research could demonstrate how computational approaches enable therapeutic advances impossible through experiment alone, translating molecular insights into engineered devices.