Dan van der Weide elected to The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering

The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has elected Grainger Institute for Engineering Professor Daniel van der Weide to its 2026 College of Fellows. 

Election to AIMBE honors individuals who have made outstanding or pioneering contributions to engineering and medicine research, practice, education and related fields and technologies. This election places van der Weide in the top two percent of engineers in these fields; to be part of this elite group, which includes Nobel Prize laureates and fellows of the National Academy of Engineering, researchers must demonstrate a commitment to embracing innovation in the service of improving the healthcare and safety of society. 

The institute acknowledged van der Weide for innovative medical applications of high-frequency electronics to surgical navigation and percutaneous ablation therapies that have improved patients’ lives.

Van der Weide’s research focuses on developing high frequency tools, between 100 megahertz and 1 terahertz and beyond, for a wide range of applications. That has included developing new microwave therapies for tumor ablation and tools for functional imaging and manipulation of nanometer-scale electronics and biomolecules, useful in chemical sensing, drug discovery and advanced computational elements. He and his team have also developed spectroscoping near- and far-field microwave techniques for sensing, security and high-throughput screening. They also measure and model advanced semiconductor devices and circuits for improved quantum computation and communication.

Over his career, van der Weide has received many awards, including an NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a DARPA Ultra Electronics Program Outstanding Individual Technical Achievement Award, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, as well as many awards from UW-Madison and the College of Engineering. He is a co-founder of several companies, including Neuwave Medical, Inc., Elucent Medical, Optametra and ANETENNEX. He is a fellow of IEEE.

Van der Weide was among 175 new AIMBE fellows inducted at a ceremony during the Institute’s annual meeting held in April, 2026, in Arlington, Virginia.