Nick Scaperdas
Biomedical Engineer
Over a year of
Professional Research Experience
B.Sc. in Bioengineering
From Northeastern University
I am a bioengineering graduate from Northeastern University, with a concentration in Biomedical Devices and Bioimaging. My goal is to develop life-changing devices to improve the efficiency and quality of patient care. In the coming years, I want to improve to broaden my experience in the bioengineering field and improve the engineering skills I'll be using for the rest of my career.
Piscataway, NJ
Feb. 2025 - Present
In my current role, I continue to use my wet lab skills by venturing into mass spectrometry. Under the guidance of Dr. Haiyan Zheng, I work on projects from across Rutgers' greater research community, including other labs from Rutgers itself, labs from universities across the country, and even some nearby corporations. Using advanced LCMS systems such as the QE Exactive HF, Orbitrap Eclipse, and Bruker timsTOF, we conduct a variety experiments from hydrogen deuterium exchange analysis to molecular weight calculation.
Burlington, MA
Jan. 2023 - June 2023
In my second co-op, I joined the lab of Dan Wilson as part of the hydrogels project. I worked on the development of new hydrogel formulations, including experimenting with different polymers, crosslinkers, dyes, and pigments. In conjunction with Northeastern's Deravi and Joshi labs, our goal was to develop a gel which could consistently and reversibly change size and color depending on the acidity of the surrounding buffer. You can read more about this project below!
Charlestown, MA
Jan. 2022 - June 2022
In my first co-op, I joined Solid's Process Development team. With the goal of developing a viral vector gene therapy for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, I contributed to the team's HSV and AAV production experiments. My responsibilities included maintaining multiple mammalian cell lines with HEK-293 or Vero-27 type cells, conducting experiments to optimize virus production and adherent cell attahcment to microcarriers, and managing bioreactor environments using DeltaV bioreactor software.
Check out the publication of this project in
Matter!
The publication has more information on the entire project, but my
contributions are shown on the right. Using a laser cutter, I
constructed a buffer-exchange chamber out of layers of silicone
rubber and acrylic. Inside, a 3D printed holder kept hydrogel
pucks in place while images were taken over a two week period.
Using ImageJ, I quatified the size and color changing capabilities
of a specially designed poly(acrylamide-co-acrylic acid) gel.
Skills:
Wet Lab, OnShape, ImageJ, Soldering, Experimental Analysis
Many houses in rural Knox County Maine are susceptible to indoor
air pollution from wood or gas burning. However, data
characterizing pollutants and linking that to respiratory
conditions is scarce. Our goal was to construct a device which
could sense a greater range of pollutants than commercially
available devices while transmitting air quality data to a server
over WiFi for a year-long period. We eventually brought the device
to a Knox County Town Hall prior to our final presentation and
poster demonstration at Northeastern.
Skills:
KiCad, SOLIDWORKS, Soldering, C++
Read about this project in
Northeastern News!
As part of Northeastern's Generate Product Development Studio, we
were tasked by Tatum Robotics to develop a bracelet and doorbell
combination for the Deaf-Blind community. Currenlty, they lack a
good way to know when someone is at their door, leading them to
often leave their door unlocked. Our bracelet/doorbell combo
communicated over bluetooth and vibrated when someone rang the
doorbell.
Skills:
PCB Design and Assembly, EasyEDA, Soldering, C++
As part of Northeastern's Mechanical Engineering Computation and
Design course, my final project tasked me with taking an object in
my daily life and redesigning it. As someone with a cheap creaky
bedframe, I naturally chose this as my object. I produced two
redesigns with extra supports in SOLIDWORKS while maintaining the
symmetrical design to maintain the bedframe's foldability. After
simulating loading using Abaqus FEA software, I demonstrated that
my redesigns expereinced less deformation under a high load.
Skills:
Abaqus FEA, SOLIDWORKS, Report Writing
In another semester at Generate's Product Development Studio, I
worked on a kitchen appliance specifically designed for the
West-African cuisine, Fufu. Our kitchen-aid style mixer integrated
mixing, induction heating, and water dispensing systems to allow
for an automated Fufu cooking experience. As part of the
electrical team, I aided with designing the water dispensing
sytem, writing code for the machine, and integrating the PCB.
Skills:
KiCad, VSCode, C++, Git
In school, I pursued a computer science minor to support my
engineering career. To sharpen my coding skills following school,
I taught myself HTML and CSS using online resources. After uniting
some skills learned from various online tutorials, I brought
together my learned skills to showcase my experience in this
website! I hope you have enjoyed the final product!
Skills:
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, VSCode, Git
