Christopher Bayan, MS (February 2008)
I completed my MS in Biomedical Engineering in 2008. I received BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, specializing in Digital Signals Processing. Previously, I worked for two medical device companies in Silicon Valley, CA. Both companies specialize in sleep apnea detection. I studied tracking collagen remodeling within an ECM utilizing non-linear imaging techniques.
Steve Boutrus, MS (May 2006)
I joined the ODDET group as an electrical engineering senior in the summer of 2005, and stayed over the subsequent year to complete a MS in biomedical engineering. During this time in the lab, I built an in vivo flow cytometer and used it to conduct cancer research. I completed an MD from Tufts University School of Medicine in 2010 and an emergency medicine residency at Stony Brook in NY in 2013. My interests are emergency medicine, medical instrument design, and medicine in rural or international settings.
Tyler Chang, PhD Student
Tyler completed his MS in May 2013. He is now working at Athenahealth, an electronic medical record company located in Watertown, MA, as a Clinical Performance Associate.
Lee Cullen, MS (July 2006)
Ms. Cullen was an MS student in the group, working on spectroscopic imaging of normal and pre-cancerous cells. She is still in Boston and has been with Fletcher Spaght, Inc. for nearly 6 years now. The company is a consulting firm focused on healthcare and high tech and also has a venture fund. She is a Consultant in the Healthcare practice focused on market research and strategy for medical device and biotech companies. The company typically works with smaller start-up phase companies, helping them develop or launch new products or business lines. Or with larger companies in a similar capacity or to aid in acquisition due diligence. She also performs due diligence for potential investment opportunities on the venture capital side. Prior to that she was an analyst with Boston Biomedical Consultants, performing market research on the in-vitro diagnostics market. InfraRed X, Inc. Responsible for the research, development, design, execution and interpretation of experiments that contribute to performance verification and product development of cardiovascular diagnostics systems and catheters that combine spectroscopy and intravascular ultrasound.
Shamaraz Firdous, PhD, Visiting Scholar
I'm indeed privileged to have been a member of this group. I was a research fellow of Pak-US research program and involved in laser tissue interaction and bio-medical imaging study. I have a MSc in physics, and my PhD program focuses on medical imaging.
Education
PhD,Laser tissue interaction and wave propagation in random media, PIEAS.
MSc, Physics, Peshawar university.
Research Interest
Laser tissue interaction and wave propagation in random media.
Bio-medical imaging of scattering medium.
Mueller matrix polarization imaging of turbid medium.
Cherry Greiner, Senior Research Associate InfraRed X, Inc. Responsible for the research, development, design, execution and interpretation of experiments that contribute to performance verification and product development of cardiovascular diagnostics systems and catheters that combine spectroscopy and intravascular ultrasound.
Research
Differences in cell morphology can result in differences in scattered light intensity. This is exploited by commercial flow cytometers for blood cell counting. As a non-invasive alternative, I am developing an in-vivo based flow cytometer to count circulating white blood cells and cancer cells through the detection of scattered light and fluorescence.
Sharad Gupta, Postdoctoral Associate
I did my PhD at IIT-Kanpur (India) and MS at IIT- Roorkee (India). My PhD thesis was focused on extraction of intrinsic fluorescence from turbid media like human tissues. The main motivation for that work was to introduce a non-invasive/ minimally invasive technique for early diagnosis of cancer. My research interests include development and application of optical techniques for their utilization in the field of Biomedical Engineering.
Peter Huang, Postdoctoral Associate
Dr. Huang was a postdoctoral research associate in the ODDET group in 2006-2008, working on the development of lightscattering based in vivo flow cytometry. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Binghamton University.
Derrick Hwu, EMD Student
I was a student in the nine-year EMD program at Tufts. I completed my BS in 2007 and my MS in 2009. In the past I have done research with Professor Afsar using a Backward Wave Oscillator to determine the dielectric properties of various household materials. In the future I hope to perform more research that relates engineering to medicine.
Jonathan Levitt, PhD Student
I received my PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Tufts in 2009, and my BS in Computer Engineering from Wentworth Institute of Technology in 2004. My research focuses on developing non-invasive, optical tools and techniques to identify early stages of cancer. Specifically I am working on developing and characterizing 3-D engineered epithelial tissue structures using spatial and frequency domain analysis of multi-photon excited autofluorescence images. Other projects include the design of video-rate high resolution optical microscopes and real time non-invasive disease assessment.
Douglas MacDonald, MS Student
I received my MS in Biomedical Engineering in 2011. A while ago, I received two Bachelor of Science degrees from MIT – one in mathematics and the other (interdisciplinary) in learning theories of biological and man-made brains. Between then and joining Tufts, I developed scientific software for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Thinking Machines Corp. and system and test software for area computer manufacturers including Digital Equipment Corp., Sun Microsystems, and more. My thesis research at Tufts applied medical optics in novel ways to assess molecular and cellular markers of tissue change.
Claudia Mujat, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate
I was a Postdoctoral Associate at Tufts. I got my PhD in Optics from the School of Optics/CREOL at University of Central Florida, and actually managed to get through before any major hurricane hit. I'm interested in imaging barely diseased stuff, for early detection purposes. In my spare time, I love to read and write; and while I've yet to write the great American novel, my PhD thesis did make it on Amazon.
William Rice, PhD Student
Bill completed his undergraduate studies in physiology at the University of Minnesota after which he moved to Boston to work at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine. At the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Bill worked with cell and animal models of cancer, and photodynamic therapy. Prior to attending graduate school at Tufts, Bill was at Wyeth for a brief time.
Marie Tupaj, MS Student
Marie Tupaj finished her PhD in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in February 2012 and is now a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. During her time in the ODDET group, Marie worked on optically tracing the effects of electrical stimulation on osteogenic differentiating human mesenchymal stem cells. As a biomedical engineering doctoral student, Marie focused on a project supported by the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine that integrated biochemical, biophysical, and bioelectrical strategies into silk nerve guides for applications in peripheral nerve repair and limb and digit salvage. Prior to graduate school, Marie worked at two small tissue engineering companies, Organogenesis and Histogenics, and also as a computer engineer at Sun Microsystems. She received a BS in Electrical Engineering from Tufts University in 2001. Her research interests include neuroprosthetic device design and examining electric field effects on cells.
Joanna Xylas, BS/PhD Student
Joanna completed her PhD requirements in July 2012 and has been working at TEI Biosciences. TEI is a Boston-based private biomedical device company that has a platform technology made of acellular fetal bovine scaffolds. It is focused on wound healing, soft tissue reconstructions, and challenging/complex tissue repairs that result from burns, traumas, cancer or chronic diabetic wounds. The company was founded by Dr. Eugene Bell, who also founded Organogenesis.