BNMC Seminar - Lighting the Way in Biomedicine

Changhuei Yang
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering
California Institute of Technology

Biophotonics is a rapidly evolving research area aimed at providing new light-based imaging, diagnostic and therapeutic tools for biologists and clinicians. I will be talking about two areas of biophotonics research that are occurring in my lab:

The Optofluidic Microscope –

A microscope the size of Washington's nose on a quarter, that does not contain any lenses and is yet able to image with better resolution than a typical microscope. The application range of this invention is wide: it can change the way biologists think about and use microscope,
it enables clinical point-of-care blood and urine analysis, and it can improve Third World heathcare by providing cheap and rugged microscope units.

Tissue Scattering Suppression by Time Reversal Phase Conjugation –

An approach for turning biological tissues transparent through the use of holography. Light scattering in tissues may look random but their trajectories are deterministic. As such, it is possible to create a situation where light scattered from a tissue will retrace their paths through the tissue. I will report on our initial findings and point out a few applications for such a phenomenon.

Professor Yang graduated from MIT in 2002 and has steadily moved towards warmer climate thereafter. After short stints at ESPCI (Paris) and Duke University, he settled down in Caltech in Dec 2003.  Professor Yang recently received the NSF CAREER award and the Coulter Foundation Early Career Award.