Rate My Professor Raudel Avila

Raudel Avila serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering within Rice University's Engineering faculty, having joined the institution in 2023. He holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University (2023), earned under the mentorship of Prof. Yonggang Huang, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at El Paso (2017). During his graduate studies, Avila received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2018-2022), the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (2018-2023), and the Outstanding Researcher Award from the International Institute of Nanotechnology. Additionally, in 2022, he was selected as a Future Trailblazer in Engineering by Purdue University for his contributions to expanding representation and diversity in engineering.

Dr. Avila directs the Computational Mechanics and Bioelectromagnetic Laboratory, where his research centers on modeling and simulation of bioelectronics for health care and biomedical applications. His work develops theoretical and computational frameworks to study scalability, packaging, power limitations, tissue interactions, and energy absorption in bioelectronic devices, integrating mechanics, materials, and electromagnetics. Targeted applications encompass dissolvable pacemakers, sweat collection microfluidic devices, ultra-soft biosensors for NICU and PICU patients, implantable optogenetic devices, bioresorbable temperature sensors and pacemakers, miniaturized pressure sensors for prosthetics, and drug delivery technologies. He is a member of the Ken Kennedy Institute, Rice Digital Health Initiative, and Houston Methodist-Rice Digital Health Institute. Avila's accolades include the Roy E. Campbell Faculty Development Award from Rice University (2025), Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2024), ASME Haythornthwaite Research Initiation Grant ($20,000; 2023), Brown Teaching Grant (2024), Provost TMC Collaborator Seed Grant (2024), and Rice Space Institute Grant (2024). Key publications feature "Strain-invariant stretchable radio-frequency electronics" (Nature, 2024), "A compact, wireless system for continuous monitoring of breast milk expressed during breastfeeding" (Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2025), "A closed-loop network of wireless, body integrated devices for temporary electrotherapy" (Science, 2022), and "Modeling programmable drug delivery in bioelectronics with electrochemical actuation" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021).