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The Franklin Research Lab

We believe that Wearable and Implantable Electronics will revolutionize chronic disease diagnosis and management.

Through:

Through the multidisciplinary study of these bioelectronic and biophotonic systems, we aim to shed light on unexplored aspects of human physiology.

News

2025

• Megh wins First place in the BESA 3MT competition!
• Rawad and Hugo win First and Third place in the TRANSFORM HF poster competition!
• Matthew Lee and Brynn Voigt successfully defend their Masters Theses
• Samantha wins First Place Podium Prize at the University of Toronto Engineering Research Conference
• Nicholas won Second place at the TRCHR Summer Student Showcase 3MT competition
• Nicholas and Megh publish a paper on Skin Tone Corrected Pulse Oximetry Models!
• Isha wins a Vector Scholarship in Artificial Intelligence!
• Isha Sharma, Benjamin Tomka, and Nicholas Chan join FRL as graduate researchers!
• Megh wins a CaRDM Eq Travel award
• Nicholas Chan receives a TRANSFORM HF Undergraduate Summer Research Award
• Megh has been awarded an SPIE Optics and Photonics Scholarship!
• Samantha Unger wins a CGS-D Scholarship and a Teaching Assistant Award!
• Megh wins a CGS-D Scholarship!
• Noor has been selected as a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow (only 23 people out of hundreds of applicants across Canada)
  • https://bme.utoronto.ca/news/dr-noor-abu-jarad-awarded-a-banting-postdoctoral-fellowship/
• Megh and Matthew present their work at SPIE Photonics West

2024

• Samantha and Megh win Poster Awards at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research Annual Symposium
• Dr. Franklin wins a Connaught New Researcher Award from the University of Toronto
• Ryan Manesh joins FRL as a graduate student and Edwin Wong joins as a Postdoctoral Fellow!
• Our team wins a CIHR Project Grant on equitable oximeter development, in collaboration with Washington University in St. Louis, and Toronto General Hospital!
  • Highlighted by University of Toronto, Institute of Biomedical Engineering
• Dr. Noor Abu Jarad joins the lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow
• Christoph Kassir receives a First Year Summer Research Fellowship
• Jeyan Mehta wins a Dean’s UG Student Summer Research Pivot Fellowship Award
• Nicholas Chan receives a TRANSFORM HF Undergraduate Summer Research Award
• Yume Yamamoto, Aryan Ghosh, Christoph Kassir, and Jeyan Mehta join the lab for undergraduate summer research
• Anat wins Best Presentation Award in the Cardiovascular Sciences Collaborative Program
• Tenzin wins an OGS-D Scholarship and a TRANSFORM HF Trainee Award
• Matthew Lee wins a CIHR CGS-M Scholarship
• Samantha Unger wins a NSERC CGS-M Scholarship and an EngSci Teaching Assistant Award
• Our team wins a Data Sciences Institute (DSI) and Tanenbaum Institute for Science in Sport (TISS) Catalyst Grant in collaboration with Prof. Chris McIntosh on motion artifact reduction in optical wearables using machine learning
  • Highlighted by TRANSFORM HF

2023

• As part of a team led by Prof. Aaron Wheeler, we won a Canadian Foundation for Innovation award to upgrade the CRAFT facility
• Hugo and Samantha win CaRDM Eq Trainee Awards
• Our team wins a National Research Council – CRAFT project award for developing novel stretchable optoelectronic sensing devices
• Matthew wins an Ontario Graduate Scholarship – MASc award
• Hugo wins a Loo Geok Engineering Scholarship
• Our work is published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on the Classification of Hemodynamic States via Time Synchronized Wearables
• Dr. Franklin publishes with other optical wearables experts on, “The 2023 Wearable Photoplethysmography Roadmap” in Physiological Measurement
• Megh and Anat win Poster Awards from the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research HF Symposium
• Our team becomes Open Oximetry Finalists! Allowing us to validate experimental oximeters in collaboration with the Hypoxia Lab at UCSF.
• Samantha Unger, Matthew Lee, and Brynn Voigt joins the lab and the Institute of Biomedical Engineering
• Anat wins Runner Up at the Women in Science and Engineering National 3 Minute Thesis Competition
• Our team wins a Translational Biology and Engineering Program (TBEP) Translation Team Grant and Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research Innovation Fund in Collaboration with the Centre for Digital Therapeutics at UHN on the development of novel wearables
• Jonathan wins an Ontario Graduate Student Scholarship – PhD award
• Tenzin wins the ECHO Discovery Pitch Competition
• Publication in Science Advances on Plasmonic Paint gets highlighted by the World Economic Forum, NSF, Forbes, Wired, NPR, Phys.org, and Nature Nanotechnology.
• Our team wins a NSERC Discovery Grant which will help support us in developing novel wearable devices for the next 5 years
• Nicholas wins a TRANSFORM HF Undergraduate Summer Research Program Scholarship
• Megh wins Best Presentation Award in the Cardiovascular Sciences Collaborative Specialization – Annual Student Research Day
• Megh is a University of Toronto – 3 Minute Thesis Finalist

2022

• Our team wins a Heart & Stroke Foundation and Brain Canada, Heart-Brain IMPACT Grant as part of a team led by Prof. Doug Lee on the connection between heart failure and vascular dementia
• Our team wins a Canadian Foundation for Innovation-JELF and Ontario Research Foundation grant to help establish a biophotonics and electronics lab
• Megh publishes an article on pulse oximetry in JACCS: Advances
• FRL highlighted in Groundbreakers Season 2, Episode 3
• Anat Usatinsky wins the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Health Trainee Day Poster Competition
• Our team wins a NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience (CREATE) Grant in collaboration with Prof. Azadeh Yadollahi, Prof. Craig Simmons, and more
• Jonathan Wu wins an EPIC-AT Fellowship
• Dr. Franklin highlighted in UCF Today
• Jonathan Wu wins an Ontario Graduate Student Scholarship – Masters award
• Megh Rathod wins a Translational Biology and Engineering Program (TBEP) 3 Minute Thesis Award
• FRL wins an EMH Seed Grant in collaboration with Alexander Koven, MD and Monica Farcus, MD
• Megh Rathod wins a TRANSFORM HF Masters Trainee Award
• Jason Park wins a Translational Biology and Engineering Program (TBEP) Summer Scholarship award
• Hannah Kim, Nicholas Chan, and Jason Park join the lab and receive a summer Engineering Science Research Opportunities Program (ESROP) Scholarship
• Alexander Koven wins the Dr. Allan S. Tauber Graduate Student Award and the Draxis Health Inc. Surgeon Scientist Fellowship
• FRL wins a TRANFORM HF Seed Grant on equitable pulse oximeters
• Alexander Koven wins an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship – Masters award
• Megh Rathod wins an NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship – Masters award

2021

• Alexander Koven, MD joins the lab
• Megh Rathod, Anat Usatinsky, and Jonathan Wu joins the lab and the Biomedical Engineering Masters Program
• Haolin Liu joins the lab and receives a summer Engineering Science Research Opportunities Program (ESROP) Scholarship
• The Franklin Research Lab (FRL) starts at the University of Toronto and Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research (TRCHR):
  https://discover.bme.utoronto.ca/daniel-franklin-joins-bme-tbep-as-assistant-professor/
  https://tedrogersresearch.ca/2021/09/daniel-franklin-chair/

“The way medicine approaches human suffering has always been determined by the technology available at any given time.” 

Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.