Sadik Esener, Ph.D., is the director of the Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research center and Wendt Family Endowed Chair in Early Cancer Detection at the Biomedical Engineering Department at OHSU. Prior to joining OHSU, Esener served in several leadership roles at the University of California, San Diego, in which he achieved results by bringing together scientists and technology across disciplines. He served as the director and principal investigator of the NanoTumor Cancer, a Nanotechnology Center of Excellence funded by the National Cancer Institute. He has also held leadership roles with the Center for Heterogeneously Integrated Photonics Systems (CHIPS) as well as the Opto-Electronic Stacked Processors (OESP) and the Fast Read-out Optical Data Storage Industrial Consortium, which were both funded by DARPA.

His research focus has involved projects in multiple scientific fields relevant to cancer early detection, including electrical and optical engineering, nano-engineering and material sciences for biomedical applications.  In addition, he has made many pioneering contributions to the fields of optical interconnects, light modulation, optical data storage, biophotonics as applied to gene chips, cell sorting and manipulation, and heterogeneous integration of photonics, electronics and biological components. More recently his work has focused on the synthesis and application of nanoparticles delivery of biologics for cancer therapies, brain mapping and in vivo imaging.

Esener received his Ph.D. in applied physics and electrical engineering from the Universtiy of California, San Diego. He has published more than 375 journal and conferences articles, and made more than 250 presentations in international scientific meetings, 60 of which were invited. He holds 23 issued patents, has authored several book chapters, and organized and chaired scientific international conferences. Esener co-founded and served on the board of directors and scientific advisory boards of several companies.