Amir Manbachi


Amir Manbachi is an Iranian-born, Canadian-American academic and researcher, currently working as an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and known for his work in Medical Ultrasound. He is the co-founder and current director of HEPIUS Innovation Lab at Johns Hopkins University.

Biography

Manbachi is of Iranian descent. He attended the University of Toronto, where he completed his bachelor's degree in applied sciences in the Engineering Science program. Later, he obtained his master's degree and a PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of Toronto. During his third year as a PhD candidate, he, along with his university advisers, established Spinesonics Medical which developed a sensor designed to aid in vertebral screw insertion procedures. They received $850,000 of grant funding to support their research and development efforts.
In 2016, Manbachi joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University as a research faculty member. At Johns Hopkins University, he co-founded HEPIUS Innovation Labs and now serves as its director. He also served as an associate director of the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design.
In 2018, Manbachi and Nao J. Gamo began researching ultrasound technology with the potential to target and "burn" brain tumors. They received a total of $750,000 in grant funding from Hopkins, Maryland Technology Development Corp., and the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation for this purpose.
In 2020, Manbachi and a team co-led by Nicholas Theodore at Johns Hopkins Medicine were awarded a $13.5M grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to research wearable and implantable ultrasound technologies for spinal cord injury patients.
In 2022, Manbachi received Baltimore Business Journal's 40 under 40 award, and secured a Johns Hopkins Discovery award.
In 2023, the HEPIUS Innovation Lab at Hopkins, led by Manbachi, received a Food and Drug Administration Breakthrough Device Designation for a novel ultrasound imaging implant.
In 2024, he received American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine's Peter Arger Excellence in Medical Student Education Award as well as the Hisako Terasaki's Young Innovator Award.

Awards and recognition

  • 40 under 40 by Baltimore Business Journal
  • Hisako Terasaki's Young Innovator Award 2024
  • AIUM's Peter Arger Excellence in Medical Student Education Award 2024
  • University of Toronto's Engineering Alumni Network Research & Innovation Award 2024
  • University of Toronto's 2015 Inventor of the year award
  • Robert B. Pond Sr. Excellence in Teaching Excellence Award, Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering
  • Johns Hopkins Inst for Clinical and Translational Research's KL2 Clinical Research Scholar, 2020
  • FDA Breakthrough designation pathway awarded to his MUSIC device invention, 2023

Selected publications

  • Tsehay, Yohannes; Zeng, Yinuo; Weber-Levine, Carly; Awosika, Tolu; Kerensky, Max; Hersh, Andrew; Ou, Ze; Jiang, Kelly; Bhimreddy, Meghana; Bauer, Stuart J; Theodore, John N; Quiroz, Victor M; Suk, Ian; Alomari, Safran; Sun, Junfeng; Tong, Shanbao; Thakor, Nitish V; Doloff, Joshua C; Theodore, Nicholas; Manbachi, Amir. "" IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2023 Jul;70:1992-2001. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2022.3233345. Epub 2023 Jun 19. ; PMC10510849.