Ida Pavlichenko

Ida Pavlichenko (born ) is an Azerbaijani biomedical engineer and a Technology Development Fellow at the Harvard University Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Pavlichenko is the co-founder and chief executive officer of PionEar Technologies, a medical device company that develops intelligent technologies for treating ear and hearing disorders. The tympanostomy technology she invented for treating recurrent ear infections has been nationally recognized for its innovative design which addresses many of the limitations of current ear tubes.

Early life and education Pavlichenko was born in Azerbaijan. Pavlichenko completed her Master of Science in physics at the Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, graduating summa cum laude in 2010. Working under the mentorship of Aziz M. Muzafarov, Pavlichenko pioneered the design of novel multi-arm star-like polymethylsiloxane polymers. They explored the behavior and characterized the properties of these nano-sized molecules at the air-water interface. During her time at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research at LMU, Pavlichenko studied under the mentorship of Bettina V. Lotsch and worked to develop novel highly sensitive photonic crystals that could detect chemical and physical stimuli. Photonic crystals are incredible structures that reflect only highly specific wavelengths of light due to the periodically arranged nanostructure of the photonic crystals. The mesoporous structure led to highly sensitive changes in refractive index based on humidity and was capable of producing a dramatic spectral shift within a humidity range of 25% to 55%.

Career and research After completing her graduate training in 2014, Pavlichenko began her postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in the lab of Joanna Aizenberg at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. During her postdoc, Pavlichenko developed novel biologically inspired medical devices and was the co-inventor on several patents. Point-of-care diagnostics are an important focus of healthcare innovation as they provide rapid testing and results to enable more informed care and speedier recovery. Pavlichenko was inspired to create these devices as her young daughter was suffering from recurrent ear infections, like many young children do, and she wanted a better solution compared to the often ineffective ear tubes that physicians are limited to using to treat earn infections. Typical ear tube technology often gets infected, the tubes are pre-maturely extruded from the ear, can become clogged, and re-insertion often lead to scarring later in life. 2018 Gold Prize at the MassChallenge Boston 2016 MIT Impact Program Fellow

Select publications

Nanomorphology tuning of the thermal response of TiO2/SiO2 Bragg stacks. Ida Pavlichenko, Armin T. Exner, Gennady Logvenov, Giuseppe Scarpa, Paolo Lugli, Bettina V. Lotsch. Canadian Journal of Chemistry, 2012, 90:1069-1077, Pavlichenko, I., Exner, A. T., Lugli, P., Scarpa, G., & Lotsch, B. V. (2013). Tunable thermoresponsive TiO2/SiO2 Bragg stacks based on sol–gel fabrication methods. Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, 24(18), 2204–2214. Yetisen, Ali & Butt, Haider & Volpatti, Lisa & Pavlichenko, Ida & Humar, Matjaž & Kwok, Sheldon & Koo, Heebeom & Kim, Ki Su & Naydenova, Izabela & Khademhosseini, Ali & Hahn, Sei & Yun, Seok. (2015). Photonic hydrogel sensors. Biotechnology advances. 34. 10.1016/j.biotechadv.2015.10.005. Ranft, Annekathrin & Pavlichenko, Ida & Szendrei, Katalin & Zehetmaier, Peter & Hu, Yinghong & von Mankowski, Olaf Alberto & Lotsch, Bettina. (2015). 1D photonic defect structures based on colloidal porous frameworks: Reverse pore engineering and vapor sorption. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials. 216. 10.1016/j.micromeso.2015.05.031.