Brian T. Cunningham completed his PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, and was a postdoctorate scientist at Sandia National Laboratory, USA. He is currently a faculty member in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the department Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined the university following a 15-year career in industry.  

His technical focus is the utilization of photonics for biosensing in applications that include life science research, diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and pharmaceutical screening.  

Cunningham serves as the Director of the Center for Genomic Diagnostics at the Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, and as a Program Leader for the Cancer Center at Illinois on the topic of Cancer Measurement Technology and Data Science. 

He has over 90 issued US patents and over 195 peer-reviewed journal publications.  He is a Fellow of Optica, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, IEEE, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He has received several honors, including the Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award, the Everitt Award for Teaching Excellence, the George Anner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award, Medical Scholars Program Outstanding Advisor Award, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Bronze Tablet.