Dr. Sambanis received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. Following his post-doctoral appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Biotechnology Process Engineering Center, he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1989, where he is currently Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and in the Emory/Georgia Tech Department of Biomedical Engineering. As of September 2013, he is a rotator at the National Science Foundation, where he serves as Director of the Biomedical Engineering Program.
His research interests are in cellular and tissue engineering, and specifically in developing cell and tissue-based therapies for diabetes, including cell encapsulation, genetic engineering of cells for insulin secretion, monitoring of tissue constructs in vitro and post-transplantation in vivo, cell and tissue cryopreservation, cell and tissue functional evaluation, and mathematical modeling at the tissue, cell, and intracellular levels. He has authored or co-authored more than 85 book chapters and journal publications. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. His research is currently supported by NIH and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.