Professor Ryan D. Sochol
Dr. Ryan D. Sochol currently works at the intersection of micro/nanoscale engineering, chemistry, and biology as an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering within the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. Prof. Ryan Sochol’s Bioinspired Advanced Manufacturing (BAM) Laboratory pioneers micro/nanoscale additive manufacturing or “3D Printing” approaches to solve mechanically and physically complex challenges, with an emphasis on biomedical applications.
In addition to his research, Prof. Sochol established and currently teaches the primary “Additive Manufacturing” course at UMD, which is a dual undergraduate-graduate level course offered in both the Fall and Spring Semesters. In Fall of 2019, Prof. Sochol was elected to a two-year term as Co-President of the “Mid-Atlantic Micro/Nano Alliance (MAMNA)” – a non-profit organization that supports the industrial, academic, and governmental research community surrounding the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.
Prof. Sochol holds Affiliate appointment in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering and the Institute for Systems Research, a Fischell Institute Fellow appointment with the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, and is an Executive Committee Member of the Maryland Robotics Center. Prof. Sochol received the NSF CAREER Award in 2020 and the Early Career Award from the Institute of Physics (IOP) Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering in 2021 and was honored as a JMM Emerging Leader in 2021 and a Rising Star by Advanced Materials Technologies in 2023. His group received IEEE MEMS Outstanding Student Paper Awards in both 2019 and 2021 and the Hilton Head Workshop Best Paper Award (Runner-Up) in 2022. Dr. Sochol was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure on July 1, 2022.
Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park, Dr. Sochol served two primary academic roles: (i) as an NIH Fellow within the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and (ii) as the Founder and Director of the Micro Mechanical Methods for Biology (M3B) Laboratory Program – a division of the Liwei Lin Laboratory – within the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, Dr. Sochol majored in Mechanical Engineering, receiving his B.S. from Northwestern University in 2006, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, in 2009 and 2011, respectively, with Doctoral Minors in Bioengineering and Public Health. Thereafter, Dr. Sochol served as a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Shoji Takeuchi’s Laboratory at the University of Tokyo and as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Prof. Liwei Lin’s Laboratory (while collaborating with the labs of Prof. Luke P. Lee, Prof. Song Li, and Prof. Kristofer S.J. Pister) at UC Berkeley. During this time, Dr. Sochol established the M3B Lab, through which he advised over 80 student researchers as Program Director on using advanced manufacturing methods for biology. This work led to Dr. Sochol’s postdoctoral position at Harvard-MIT, where he worked with Dr. Ali Khademhosseini, Dr. Joseph V. Bonventre, and Dr. Reza Abdi developing 3D printed “Kidney-on-a-Chip” platforms.
Contact Information
Ryan D. Sochol, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Affiliate Faculty, Fischell Department of Bioengineering
Fischell Institute Fellow, Robert E. Fischell Institute of Biomedical Devices
Executive Committee Member, Maryland Robotics Center
A. James Clark School of Engineering
University of Maryland, College Park
Email: rsochol@umd.edu
Tel: (301) 405-6928
(Office) Room 2147 | (Lab) Room 2152
Glenn L. Martin Hall, Building 088
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742