Walfre Franco is an Assistant Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at UMass Lowell.

Walfre Franco, Ph.D.

Interim Department Chair, Associate Professor

College
Francis College of Engineering
Department
Biomedical Engineering
Phone
978-934-3825
Office
Falmouth Hall 301A

Expertise

Medical Devices, Biomedical Optics, Computational Modeling

Research Interests

Prof. Franco's research initiatives span the design, development, and fabrication of devices, sensors, and computational tools for solving health-related problems.

Education

  • Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
    Concentration: Thermal and Fluid Sciences
    Dissertation: Hydrodynamics and Control in Thermal-Fluid Networks

  • M.S., Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
    Concentration: Thermal and Fluid Sciences

  • B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México
    Concentration: Thermal Sciences
    Thesis: Composite materials extrusion using oscillating dies

Biosketch

Walfre Franco is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Before joining UMass Lowell, Franco was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and an Assistant in Biomedical Engineering at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Notre Dame in the USA. His doctoral training was in heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and control. His postdoctoral training was in biomedical optics at the University of California with appointments at the Department of Mechanical Engineering in Riverside and the Beckman Laser Institute in Irvine. After his postdoctoral training and before joining HMS and MGH, he worked as an engineer for a medical laser company.

Franco has led the translation of medical devices from concept to commercialization in academic and industrial settings.

Selected Publications

For a full list of publications please see my Google Scholar profile.