Research Interests
Dr. Manbachi is an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include applications of sound and ultrasound to various neurosurgical procedures. These applications include imaging the spine and brain, detection of foreign body objects, remote ablation of brain tumors, monitoring of blood flow and tissue perfusion, as well as other upcoming interesting applications such as neuromodulation and drug delivery. His teaching activities mentorship with BME Design Teams as well as close collaboration with clinical experts in Surgery and Radiology at Johns Hopkins.
His previous work included the development of ultrasound-guided spine surgery. He obtained his PhD from the University of Toronto, under the supervision of Dr. Richard S.C. Cobbold. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (2015-16) and the founder and CEO of Spinesonics Medical (2012–2015), a spinoff from his doctoral studies.
Amir is an author on >25 peer-reviewed journal articles, > 30 conference proceedings, 10 invention disclosures/patent applications and a book entitled “Towards Ultrasound-guided Spinal Fusion Surgery.” He has mentored 150+ students, has so far been raised $1.1M of funding and his interdisciplinary research has been recognized by a number of awards, including University of Toronto’s 2015 Inventor of Year award, Ontario Brain Institute 2013 fellowship, Maryland Innovation Initiative and Cohen Translational Funding.
Dr. Manbachi has extensive teaching experience, particularly in the field of engineering design, medical imaging and entrepreneurship (both at Hopkins and Toronto), for which he received the University of Toronto’s Teaching Excellence award in 2014, as well as Johns Hopkins University career centre’s award nomination for students’ “Career Champion” (2018) and finally Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering’s Robert B. Pond Sr. Excellence in Teaching Excellence Award (2018).
Titles
- Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery
- Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Education
- PhD, University of Toronto, 2015
- MSc, University of Toronto, 2010
- BSc, University of Toronto, 2008