Miguel Jimenez, PhD Hear my name
Assistant Professor
Boston University College of Engineering
Biomedical Engineering

PhD, Columbia University
BA, Harvard University



I am an Assistant Professor at Boston University with expertise in the integration of engineered microorganisms with mechanical and electronic devices. I received my B.A. in Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, where I developed a vinyl siloxane metathesis methodology under the supervision of Damian Young and Stuart Schreiber as a Herchel Smith Undergraduate Fellow. I received my Ph.D. in Chemistry at Columbia University where I developed synthetic biology-based microbial diagnostics under the supervision of Virginia Cornish as a National Science Foundation Fellow. I then did my postdoctoral work with Robert Langer at MIT where I developed formulations for microbial therapeutics and microbial-electronic monitoring devices as a Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) Fellow. I then was a Research Scientist with Giovanni Traverso at MIT, where I was the technical lead on a large DARPA program to develop ingestible bacterial-electronic to wirelessly treat food-borne illnesses and carry out first-in-human trials of the device.

I have extensive expertise spanning synthetic chemistry, molecular biology, materials science and biomedical device design. I also have experience moving biomedical devices from the lab into human clinical trials and collaborating across academic and industrial research.

I lead el Microbial Integration Group at Boston University. Our group develops miniature (0.01 – 1 cm3) portable devices that allow detection and/or production of biomolecules on demand. These devices use genetically engineered microorganisms that are integrated into and live inside microelectronics. For detection, the microbes sense a target molecule and transduce the signal to the electronics which then interface wirelessly or directly with personal devices. For production, the electronics dynamically actuate the microbes, inducing them to produce the target molecules on command. We have applied these microbial devices to develop ingestible electronics for the detection of inflammatory bowel disease and treatment of food-borne illnesses. Our current work expands on this early success by applying microbial devices to other human diseases, as well as agriculture, the environment and entertainment (AR/VR). In particular our work focuses on developing technology that works in low resource settings like those found in the field, at home and in exploration space travel.

Publications listed below are automatically derived from MEDLINE/PubMed and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing publications. Faculty can login to make corrections and additions.

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  1. Inda-Webb ME*, Jimenez M*, Liu Q, Phan NV, Ahn J, Steiger C, Wentworth A, Riaz A, Zirtiloglu T, Wong K, Ishida K, Fabian N, Jenkins J, Kuosmanen J, Madani W, McNally R, Lai Y, Hayward A, Mimee M, Nadeau P, Chandrakasan AP, Traverso G‡, Yazicigil RT‡, Lu TK‡. Sub-1.4 cm3 capsule for detecting labile inflammatory biomarkers in situ. Nature. 2023; 620 (7973):386-392. View Publication
  2. Jimenez, M., L’Heureux, J., Kolaya, E., Martin, K. B., Villaverde, Z., Khazi-Syed, A., Cao, Q., Muller, B., Byrne, J. D. & Traverso, G. Synthetic extremophiles: Species specific formulations for microbial therapeutics and beyond. bioRxiv. 2022. View Publication
  3. Liu, Q., Jimenez, M., Inda, M. E., Riaz, A., Zirtiloglu, T., Chandrakasan, A. P., Lu, T. K., Traverso, G., Nadeau, P. & Yazicigil, R. T. A Threshold-Based Bioluminescence Detector With a CMOS-Integrated Photodiode Array in 65 nm for a Multi-Diagnostic Ingestible Capsule. IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. 2022; 1-14. View Publication
  4. Inda, M. E.*, Jimenez, M.*, Liu, Q., Phan, N., Ahn, J., Steiger, C., Wentworth, A., Riaz, A., Zirtiloglu, T., Wong, K., Ishida, K., Fabian, N., Jenkins, J., Kuosmanen, J., Madani, W., McNally, R., Lai, Y., Mimee, M., Nadeau, P., Chandrakasan, A., Hayward, A., Traverso, G. ‡, Yazicigil, R. T. ‡ & Lu, T. K. ‡. “Ingestible capsule for detecting labile inflammatory biomarkers in situ. bioRxiv. 2022. View Publication
  5. Anzalone, A. V.* ‡, Jimenez, M.* ‡ & Cornish, V. W. ‡. FRAME-tags: genetically encoded fluorescent markers for multiplexed barcoding and time-resolved tracking of live cells. bioRxiv. 2021. View Publication
  6. Jimenez, M., Langer, R. & Traverso, G. Microbial therapeutics: New opportunities for drug delivery. Journal of Experimental Medicine. 2019; 1005–1009.
  7. Billerbeck, S.*, Brisbois, J.*, Agmon, N.*, Jimenez, M., Temple, J., Shen, M., Boeke, J. D., Cornish, V. W. A scalable peptide-GPCR language for engineering multicellular communication. Nature Communications. 2018; 5057.
  8. Diaconu, K., Falconer, J., O’May, F., Jimenez, M., Matragrano, J., Njanpop-Lafourcade, B. & Ager, A. Cholera diagnosis in human stool and detection in water: protocol for a systematic review of available technologies. Systematic Reviews. 2018.
  9. Ostrov, N.*, Jimenez, M.*, Billerbeck, S.*, Brisbois J., Matragrano, J., Ager, A., Cornish, V. W. A Modular Yeast Biosensor for Low-Cost Point-of-Care Pathogen Detection. Science Advances. 2017; e1603221.
  10. Wang, Y., Jimenez, M., Sheehan, P., Zhong, C., Hung, A. W., Tam, C. P., Young, D. W. Selective Access to Trisubstituted Macrocyclic E- and Z-Alkenes from the RingClosing Metathesis of Vinylsiloxanes. Organic Letters. 2013; 1218–1221.
Showing 10 of 11 results. Show More

This graph shows the total number of publications by year, by first, middle/unknown, or last author.

Bar chart showing 11 publications over 8 distinct years, with a maximum of 3 publications in 2022

YearPublications
20111
20131
20171
20182
20191
20211
20223
20231


2022 Broad Institute: Honor, Next Generation in Biomedicine
2019-2021 Translational Research Institute for Space Health, NASA: Postdoctoral Fellowship
2017 Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), NASA : Academy of Bioastronautics (AoB) Postdoctoral Associate
Contact for Mentoring:

44 Cummington St
Boston MA 02215
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