Brynmor Davis received a B.E. (Hons. 1) in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1999; a M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 2001; and a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Boston University, Boston, in 2006. His research interests include inverse problems, statistical signal processing, electromagnetics and applications in optics (particularly microscopy) and acoustics. For more information, please visit his website here.

Michael Walsh joins the University of Illinois from Lancaster University (United Kingdom) where he received his BSc in Biomedical Sciences (Hons. 1) and a Ph.D. in infrared spectroscopy for cancer and stem cell identification. As the first-ever Carle Foundation Hospital - Beckman Institute Fellow, Walsh's research plan focuses on advancing non-invasive cancer detection methods. His goals include finding ways to use imaging to automate the examination and classification of tissue in order to overcome many of the limitations that exist in current pathology methodologies. This could eventually reduce the time-consuming nature of diagnosis and it could also eliminate the operator bias that can lead to misdiagnosis. His research focuses on the automated classification of breast and prostate tissue microarrays for cancer diagnosis and toward developing infrared spectroscopy as a novel prognostic tool. Other research interest involve developing infrared spectroscopy for monitoring model cell systems.

Anil attended Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), Hyderabad for his Bachelors of Technology (BTech) degree in Mechanical Engineering. He now is a graduate student at the University of Illinois, where he has finished his Masters of Science (MS) degree in Mechanical Engineering and is in pursuit of a PhD degree. His research specifically focuses in the development of optical contrast agents based on nanoparticles to be used in novel imaging modalities developed by the Bhargava group.

Charles attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he earned his Bachelors degree in Bioengineering in 2008. Having been part of the Bhargava group since his freshman year in college, he is now a Masters student working towards a thesis after which he will pursue graduate or medical school. His work involves the automated diagnosis of skin cancer using FTIR spectroscopy in addition to computational modeling of drug diffusion and its effects on cell activation and proliferation.

Jason attended the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering in 2007. His research focuses on the automated histopathology of colon tissue images obtained using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and imaging, the detection of specific biomolecules in surgically resected intestinal tissue, and the development of filtering components applicable in FTIR imaging instrumentation.

Nell earned her BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 2005. Her research focuses on developing methods to use Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy for breast cancer histopathology analysis. She is interested in designing an automated method of assigning breast tumor grades and predicting patient prognosis.

Rong earned his BS in Biology from the University of Science and Technology of China, and MS in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is now a PhD student in Bioengineering at the University of Illinois. His research interests include prostate tissue engineering and FTIR spectroscopic imaging.

Sarah earned her BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of South Carolina in 2008. Her research focuses on the interactions between epithelial cells and stromal elements in breast cancer. She is interested in how the material and chemical properties of breast tissue affect these interactions and what insights this brings about breast cancer progression.

John is a senior in Bioengineering pursuing an Electrical Systems concentration. His postgraduate plans include obtaining a PhD in Bioengineering with a focus on imaging. His research work currently includes the development of a handheld infrared optical probe in order to perform real-time experiments on dynamic cell cultures.

Senior, Engineering Physics

Margie is a senior in Bioengineering who is currently working to determine the optimal polymeric backbone material for 3D tissue scaffolds. By finding degradation profiles, she can choose a material with characteristics compatible with the growth of multiple cell types. Her results will be combined with those of several graduate students in the lab to make the final constructs.

Senior, Engineering Physics

Senior, Bioengineering

Junior, Bioengineering

Sophomore, Bioengineering

Jin Tae received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Korea University, and his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He is a collaborator from the Saurabh Sinha Lab, Department of Computer Science and is currently working on developing automated classification methods for prostate cancer using heterogeneous data (H&E stained and FTIR).

Michael Insana Lab, Department of Bioengineering

Spencer obtained his bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering with distinction from Purdue in 2007. He is currently pursuing his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering under his advisors Minh Do from ECE and Rohit Bhargava from Bioengineering. His general research interests include Multidimensional Signal Processing, Wavelets, Compressed Sensing, and Chemical Imaging. His current work focuses on sparse reconstruction, unmixing, and super-resolution of Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopic data.