About us

Govind Kaigala,
Scientific Director

Dr. Govind Kaigala’s interests are in the areas of microscale fluid control, microscale molecular assays and technologies for personalized medicine. He is passionate about translational clinical/medical research. With his team, he strives to bring quantitation in biology and medicine by leveraging bioinstrumentation and micro-and nanosystems. He joined UBC in the Summer of 2022. Previously he was at the Research laboratory of IBM in Zurich for about 11 years where he was a Scientist and a Principal Investigator leading a team of researchers in the area of Precision Diagnostics. He earned his PhD from the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Oncology in 2009 from the University of Alberta where he developed microfluidic systems for genetic analysis. He completed an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University between the Microfluidics Laboratory in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Dept. of Urology at the Stanford Medical School (VA Hospital).

Huawei Li,
Operations Manager

Dr. Huawei Li is the Operations Manager of the Conconi Family Biodevice Foundry, where he manages facilities dedicated to the design, fabrication, and characterization of microscale biodevices. He earned his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Calabria, Italy. Dr. Li has worked extensively in both academic and industrial settings in design, fabrication, prototyping and commercialization of microscale and nanoscale devices. His expertise spans microfluidics and nanofluidics, MEMS, thin film fabrication, and a wide range of fabrication and characterization techniques. With a strong background in biodevice fabrication, process development, and technology commercialization, he is committed to supporting academic and industry partners in accelerating innovations through the Biodevice Foundry.

Sofia Graham Arshavsky
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Dr. Sofia Graham is a Michael Smith Health Research BC and Conconi Family Foundation BioDevice Innovation Fellow, supporting the Conconi Family Biodevice Foundry and leading research on biodevice development for tumor–immune interaction modeling. She completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Microtechnologies for Quantitative Biomedicine at SBME, where she specialized in microfluidic approaches to spatiotemporally model, manipulate, and characterize cancer heterogeneity using live-cell systems. Trained as a biotechnology engineer, Dr. Graham holds a dual PhD from the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and Leibniz University Hannover (Germany), where she developed microfluidic-assisted optical nanostructured biosensors for cancer diagnosis. She brings expertise in microfluidics, microfabrication, nanostructured semiconductors, surface chemistry, microscopy, and bioconjugation techniques.

Bob Perry
Engineering Technician

With more than a decade of experience building creative automation and manufacturing systems, Bob Perry has worked across aerospace, defense, and medical technology sectors to bring complex ideas into reality. His work blends practical engineering with rapid iteration, helping teams turn early concepts into functional, tested solutions. At the Conconi Family Biodevice Foundry, Bob leads the Rapid Prototyping Lab as an Engineering Technician. He partners with researchers, entrepreneurs, and early-stage companies to accelerate development in the microdevice and biomedical technology space, providing hands-on technical support, design insight, and fabrication expertise to move ideas from sketch to prototype and beyond.