Doctoral Student
Before joining Dr. Lelkes at Temple, Joseph received his B.S. and M.S. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He had undergraduate research experience studying rare mitochondrial disease in Dr. Marni Falk’s lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He spent two years as a Research Assistant for Dr. Rizwan Ahktar, developing diagnostic assays for protein biomarkers for Parkinson’s Disease in the lab of Virginia Lee and John Trojanowski. Currently he is interested in developing novel electrically stimulating bioreactors for the enhanced development of electrically excitable tissues in vitro.
Research Interests
- Tissue Engineering
- Electrical Stimulation in Tissue Culture
- Bioreactor Development
- Electrically Excitable Tissues
Published Work
Publications
Akhtar, RS, Licata, JP, et al. Measurements of auto-antibodies to α-synuclein in the serum and cerebral spinal fluids of patients with Parkinson’s disease. J Neurochem. 2018 Mar 3. doi.org/10.1111/jnc.14330
Peng et al. Inhibiting cytosolic translation and autophagy improves health in mitochondrial disease. Hum. Mol. Genetics. (2015) 24 (17): 4829-4847 first published online June 3, 2015. doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddv207
Posters
Licata, JP et al. Improved PEDOT:PSS as a transparent conducting surface for use in electrically stimulating bioreactors. Temple University Graduate Research Competition (2020). Philadelphia, PA.
Licata, JP et al. Preliminary epitope mapping of α-synuclein auto-antibodies. Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research 2016 Poster Competition (2016). Philadelphia, PA.