Lev T. Perelman is Mary Tolan and Edward Grzelakowski Professor at Harvard University and the Director of the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics at BIDMC. Perelman’s research interests are primarily focused on the application of optics to life sciences and biology. In 1995 Perelman and Itzkan explained the critical role of stress confinement in short pulse laser ablation, a basic mechanism of laser surgery (PNAS 1995), and in 1997 demonstrated with Kneipp the world’s first single molecule detection with SERS (Phys. Rev. Lett. 1997, a Citation Classics with 7,500+ citations). His group at MIT pioneered biomedical light scattering spectroscopy (LSS) for the detection of epithelial pre-cancers and early cancers in various organs of the digestive system (Phys. Rev. Lett. 1998, Nature 2000, Nature Medicine 2001 and 2010, Nature Biomed. Eng. 2017). Also, his group at Harvard developed CLASS microscopy (PNAS 2007) for label-free functional imaging of live cells. Recently, LSS and CLASS were used to demonstrate that exosomes perform cell-independent microRNA biogenesis and promote tumorigenesis (Cancer Cell 2014). CLASS was also used for label-free chromatin sensing in live cells (Science Advances 2021). Perelman has mentored over 40 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with 14 becoming professors at Harvard, Princeton, Northwestern, and other universities.

Tony Le Qiu is Associate Professor at Harvard University and Head of the Biophotonics group at the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. He has been a member of the Center since 2005 when he joined as a graduate student. A recipient of the Harvard Catalyst Advanced Imaging Concept Development Award, Tony published papers in Nature Medicine (as the first author), Nature Biomedical Engineering (as a co-senior author), Nature Communications (as a co-first author), PNAS, Cancer Cell, and other top scientific journals. He has also published four book chapters, all as a first author. His interests include the application of light scattering spectroscopy and imaging techniques in the fields of biology and medicine. He has been leading the effort of developing endoscopic light scattering spectroscopic imaging used for prediction of the malignant potential of pancreatic cystic lesions during routine diagnostic EUS-FNA procedures. In 2011 he was the first person ever with a physics or engineering doctoral degree accepted by the Harvard Medical School Scholars in Clinical Science M.M.Sc. Program. Tony has been teaching a graduate course on imaging and microscopy methods in biology and medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Irving Itzkan is Lecturer at Harvard University and Senior Scientist at the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. From 1988 to 2000 Itzkan served as Senior Scientist at MIT. Prior to that he was the Chairman of Optics Research at the Avco-Everett Research Lab (AERL), which designed and developed the first intra-aortic balloon pump, a temporary cardiac assist device used worldwide on three million people. He and L.T. Perelman explained ablation stress confinement, one of the three basic mechanisms of laser ablation (PNAS 1995). He also spearheaded the efforts to develop confocal light absorption and scattering spectroscopic (CLASS) microscopy for functional imaging of live cells without the need for exogenous contrast agents (PNAS 2007). His present research interests involve application of optics to medicine and cell biology.

Edward Vitkin is Lecturer at Harvard University and Senior Scientist at the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. He recently led the effort to find an analytical solution for the diffusion approximation near the point of entry, a long-standing problem in photon transport in turbid media, such as biological tissue (Nature Commun. 2011). His current areas of interest include light transport in biological tissue and applications to cell biology.

Yuri Zakharov is Lecturer at Harvard University and Senior Scientist at the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. He received an MS degree in radio physics and electronics in 1981 and PhD degree in physics in 1988 both from Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod, where he also served as Assistant Professor of Physics from 1998 through 2013. He has authored over 50 papers and chapters on holography, microscopy and cancer detection. His research interests include digital holography, microscopy and the application of light scattering and imaging techniques in the fields of biology and medicine.

Vladimir Turzhitsky is Instructor at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics where his research focuses on the development of novel technologies to advance healthcare and medicine. He completed his postdoctoral training in the field of native contrast microscopy and imaging at Harvard University after completing his dissertation research on the development of new biophotonics techniques for cancer screening at Northwestern University.

Lei Zhang is Instructor at Harvard University and Head of the Biology and Genetics group. He joined the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics in 2013 as a postdoctoral fellow. Originally trained as a geneticist, Dr. Zhang is now working on the interface of genetics, biomedical optics and bioengineering, developing optically controlled epigenetic and optogenetic tools.

Giuseppe Pettinato is Instructor at Harvard University and Head of the Molecular Biology and Stem Cell group. He graduated with a Master in Biology from the University of Catania in 2002, and got his PhD in Embryology in 2008 from the CABIMER joint program of the University of Catania and the Andalusian Center for Regenerative Medicine. After postdoctoral fellowships at Medical University of South Carolina and Virginia Commonwealth University he joined Harvard Medical School, working on developing hepatic organoids that could be employed in cell therapy for cases of acute and chronic liver failure. His interests include optical spectroscopic characterization of pancreatic and hepatic organoids and employing them for development of optically controlled epigenetic tools.

Umar Khan is a Member of the Research Staff at the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. He has co-authored papers in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Science Advances, Gastroenterology, Light: Science & Applications and other top scientific journals and a chapter in the book Barrett’s Esophagus: Emerging Evidence for Improved Clinical Practice. He is an expert in micro-optics fabrication.

Douglas K. Pleskow is Associate Professor at Harvard University and Clinical Chief of Gastroenterology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is also the Director of the Center for Advanced Endoscopy and the Director of the Colorectal Cancer Center. He received a BA degree in neuroscience from the University of Rochester in 1978 and MD degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1982. He has authored multiple book chapters and papers, including publications in Nature Medicine, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Gastroenterology. He has also edited a book Barrett's Esophagus: Emerging Evidence for Improved Clinical Practice. He is an expert in complex gastrointestinal problems that require therapeutic endoscopic procedures, all aspects of biliary endoscopy, endoscopic ultrasound, and pancreatic diseases. His major research interests have been application of optics and spectroscopy to early detection of precancerous changes in Barrett's esophagus, study of serologic markers in pancreatic disease, therapeutic pancreaticobiliary endoscopy and endoscopic ultrasound. Dr. Pleskow is a Fellow of American Gastroenterological Association. In 2009, he was elected the Man of the Year by the National Pancreas Foundation.

J. Thomas Lamont is Charlotte F. and Irving W. Rabb Distinguished Professor at Harvard University and former Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Prof. Lamont is an Associate Editor of New England Journal of Medicine and the Editor-in-Chief for Gastroenterology for UpToDate in Medicine. He published over 400 peer reviewed papers, including Science, Nature, PNAS, and New England Journal of Medicine articles. He is a recipient of American Gastroenterology Association Distinguished Mentor Award.

Mandeep Sawhney is Associate Professor at Harvard University and Co-Director of GI Endoscopy and the Director of Endoscopy Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He received an MD degree from the University College of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India, in 1993 and MS degree in clinical research from the University of Minnesota in 2006. He has published more than 80 manuscripts in peer reviewed journals. His clinical areas of interests are endoscopy for pancreas and biliary diseases, achalasia, Barrett's esophagus and gastrointestinal malignancy. Dr. Sawhney is a Fellow of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. He has served on several national committees, including a combined American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and the American College of Gastroenterology task-force that set national quality indicators for gastrointestinal endoscopy.

Jeffrey D. Goldsmith is Associate Professor at Harvard University and the Director of Gastrointestinal Pathology at Boston Children's Hospital. He received a BS degree in biology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1992 and the MD degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine in 1996. He has authored more than 90 articles, reviews and chapters mostly pertaining to the pathology of gastrointestinal disease and soft tissue neoplasms. His research interests include medical diseases of the gastotintestinal tract that occur in the pediatric population such as idiopathic inflammatory bowel disease and celiac disease. Dr. Goldsmith was the President of Rodger C. Haggitt Gastrointestinal Pathology Society in 2016–2017 and a Chair of the Immunohistochemistry Committee for the College of American Pathologists in 2009–2012. At Harvard, he has been the recipient of numerous teaching Awards, most recently the Betty and Ernie Singer Prize for Sustained Excellence in Teaching.

Tyler Berzin is Associate Professor at Harvard University and the Co-Director of GI Endoscopy and the Director of the Advanced Endoscopy Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He received an ScB degree in neuroscience from Brown University in 1999 and the MD degree form Brown Medical School in 2003. He has authored more than 60 articles and chapters on endoscopic ultrasound, ERCP, and quality and safety in endoscopy. Dr. Berzin is a Fellow of the American Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and a member of the American Gastroenterologic Association. At Harvard, he has been the recipient of numerous clinical and classroom teaching Awards, including a Harvard Medical School Academy Certificate of Excellence in Teaching for 2010, and the Z. Myron Falchuk Award for Mentoring and Clinical Teaching in 2016. 

Yury Popov is Assistant Professor at Harvard University. His major research focus is on liver fibrosis and cirrhosis, specifically the basic mechanisms of progression and regression of liver scarring. Prof. Popov’s goal is the development of non-invasive diagnostic tools to measure these processes in the clinic, and novel therapies to prevent and reverse cirrhosis and its life-threatening complications. His laboratory is actively working on the development, validation and optimization of small animal models for novel drug target discovery and efficacy testing. Some of Prof. Popov’s current basic research projects include the investigation of a novel macrophage-mediated pathway of fibrosis reversal, a role of intestinal microbiota in chronic liver disease, and elucidating the molecular mechanisms of fibrotic matrix stabilization and collagen cross-linking which make liver scarring irreversible.

Kanchan Kantekure is Instructor at Harvard University and Staff Pathologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She received MD degree from Vaishampayan Memorial Government Medical College in 2004. Her current research interests include pathology of gastrointestinal cancers and their precursor lesions.

Darren Roblyer is Associate Professor at Boston University. His group utilizes a suite of optical technologies to study cancer at the molecular, cellular, and tissue levels. Prof. Roblyer specializes in both diffuse optical techniques and multiphoton imaging to study tumor drug response and chemoresistance in the lab and in the clinic. His long term goal is to personalize cancer therapies through continuous monitoring with label-free and safe optical technologies.

Saveli Goldberg is Staff Member in the Division of Biostatistics and Biomathematics at the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Radiation Oncology. He is a world renowned expert in the in the field of the statistical decision making algorithms and statistical data analysis. Dr. Goldberg has published over 130 peer reviewed papers, including papers in the BMJ, Nature Biomedical Engineering, and Annals of Surgery.

Gary L. Horowitz is Professor at Tufts University and Director of Informatics at Tufts University School of Medicine. He is nationally recognized as expert, teacher, and leader in the field of clinical chemistry. Professor Horowitz recently finished serving his second 4-year term as Chair of the CAP’s Chemistry Resource Committee, and he is currently Vice Chair of the CAP’s Accuracy-Based Testing Committee. He is also an Associate Editor of Clinical Chemistry. He has received two national recognition awards from the CAP - the Distinguished Patient Care Award in 2014, and the Laboratory Improvement Programs Service Award in 2015.

Jia Sheng is Associate Professor at University at Albany-SUNY and the RNA Institute. He is interested in understanding 3D structure of nucleic acids, including tRNA, mRNA, rRNA and all other non-coding RNAs, and their metabolic pathways.

Limei Gu is Visiting Scholar at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. She graduated from Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine in 2009 and completed an internship and residency in gastroenterology at Jiangsu Province Hospital in 2016. Since 2016 she has been an attending physician at the Department of Gastroenterology at Jiangsu Province Hospital. Her present research interests involve application of optics to cell biology and development of optically controlled epigenetic tools.

Eric U. Yee is Associate Professor of Pathology at Stony Brook University. He completed a fellowship in gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary pathology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, where he also completed an anatomic and clinical pathology residency. He earned his medical degree at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver.

Mark Coughlan is a Research Fellow at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics at BIDMC. Prior to that he was a post-doctoral researcher at University College Dublin, where he primarily worked in optical design and diffractive optics research. Mark received his BSc degree in Physics and Applied Physics in 2013 and his PhD in Physics in 2017 from National University of Ireland, Galway. Mark currently works on the design and development of advanced optical systems for life sciences and biological applications, such as development of a spectroscopic microscopy system for label-free monitoring of the changes in live cell chromatin and applying it to optimize transplantable liver organoids. He also developed a portable instrument for measuring fast flying droplets in the clinical setting to assess Covid-19 transmission risk.

Xuejun Zhang is a Research Fellow at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics at BIDMC. He received his BS degree in Information and Computing Science from Anhui Jianzhu University, China in 2014 and his PhD in Biomedical Physics and Biomedical Information Technology in 2019 from Jinan University, China. Xuejun published papers in Science Advances, Gastroenterology, ACS Photonics and other top scientific journals. His research interests include biophotonics, Raman spectroscopy, and SERS.

Paul Kumar Upputuri is a Research Fellow at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. Prior to that he was a research fellow at the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and before joining NTU, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics, National University of Singapore. He received his BS in Physics from Nagarjuna University in 2003, MS in Physics from Andhra University in 2005, and PhD in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2010. Paul has published over 40 peer-reviewed papers and presented his work at over 20 scientific conferences. His research interests include in vivo noninvasive optical detection of invisible precancer in the human digestive system, super-resolution microscopy, and photoacoustics.

Liming Chen is a Research Fellow at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics at BIDMC. He received his PhD in Pharmacology from University of Connecticut in 2020. His research interests include CRISPR-based photoactivatable transcription systems and optical methods for monitoring differentiation of hepatic and pancreatic organoids.

Peirang Cao is Research Associate at the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. Prior to that he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York and scientist at the Center for Vegetable Oils and Proteins of Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China. Peirang received his BS in Biology and MS in Microbiology from Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China. In 1999 he received his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Saarland University, Saarbrucken, Germany.

James Hands is Research Fellow at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. Prior to that he was a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), designing and fabricating microfluidic/optofluidic devices and flow meters that incorporate photonic structures and cytometers that can optically measure particles under flow​. James received his BSc (Hons) degree from the University of Central Lancashire, UK in 2012, and PhD in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde, UK in 2016. During his graduate work he primarily focused on developing a rapid point-of-care test for brain tumor diagnoses, specifically glioblastima multiforme (GBM) and metastatic tumors, and differentiation between several sub-set classes, such as WHO grade and metastatic organ of origin, using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy in human blood serum collected from patients across several UK hospitals. 

Varvarova Dudenkova is Research Fellow at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. She received her MS in Radiophysics and PhD in Physics from N.I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia in 2013 and 2017, respectively. From 2017 to 2018 she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Technologies.

Conor Sheil is Research Fellow at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. He received his BSc degree in Science in 2012 and PhD in Physics in 2016 from the National University of Ireland, Galway. From 2016 to 2018 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Andrey E. Dudenkov is Research Fellow at Harvard University and the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging and Photonics. He received his MD in Radiology from Privolzhsky Research Medical University in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. From 2012 to 2018 he was a Staff Radiologist at the Nizhny Novgorod City Clinical Hospital. He is an expert in imaging of breast cancer and small bowel obstruction. His present research interests involve application of optics to early detection of cancer in the digestive tract.

Maria Glyavina received her BS and MS degrees in Biology and Neurotechnology from the N.I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia in 2016 and 2018, respectively. She has been studying plasticity and repair in the post-ischemic brain and the role of microglia in neurovascular unit. Her PhD work includes optical spectroscopic characterization of exosomes and optical neurophysiology.

Jun Qiu received his BS degree in Optical Information Science and Technology from Jianghan University in 2014. During his PhD work he has been developing a spatial heterodyne Raman spectroscopy technique for broadband, high-resolution Raman measurements. His current research interests include application of novel optical techniques in biology and medicine.