Dr. Babak Shadgan is a clinician-scientist and biomedical innovator whose research focuses on developing next-generation wearable, implantable, and remote biosensing technologies for continuous monitoring of tissue and organ physiology, enabling earlier diagnosis, precision rehabilitation, and targeted therapeutic interventions. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics, Associate Faculty Member in the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Principal Investigator at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD), and Director of the Implantable Biosensing Laboratory.
Dr. Shadgan received his medical degree and postgraduate training in Sports and Exercise Medicine from Queen Mary University of London, completed a PhD in Experimental Medicine at UBC, and pursued advanced fellowship training in Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) and Diffuse Optical Tomography at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
His multidisciplinary research integrates biomedical engineering, clinical medicine, biophotonics, physiological signal processing, and artificial intelligence to develop intelligent biosensing systems for spinal cord injury, organ and tissue viability monitoring, reconstructive surgery, organ transplantation, rehabilitation, cardiovascular health, and sports medicine. His laboratory has pioneered implantable optical and electrodiagnostic technologies for continuous monitoring of spinal cord physiology and is also developing multimodal wearable systems for real-time assessment of muscle metabolism, physiological fitness, and human performance.
Health Research BC has played a pivotal role throughout Dr. Shadgan’s research career. Beginning with a Research Trainee Award in 2007, followed by a Postdoctoral Research Trainee Award in 2011 and a Scholar Award in 2018, the organization’s sustained support has helped him build an internationally recognized translational research program that bridges engineering and medicine. Today, his research continues to advance innovative technologies that improve the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of neurological, musculoskeletal, and cardiovascular conditions while training the next generation of clinician-scientists and biomedical engineers.
