Nickolaos Savidis completed a PhD in Optical Engineering from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona on advanced wavefront correction mechanisms coupled with optofluidic systems. After graduating he joined a subsidiary of Novartis researching the advancement of medical devices and new metrology techniques. He then returned to academia joining as a postdoctoral fellow in the design, modeling, and integration of medical devices. While in the Synthetic Neurobiology group, he explored novel optogenetic hardware and systems development.