Ji-Xin Cheng

Label-free Imaging; Biomedical Instrumentation

Recruitment Needs: Looking for 2 new PhD students

Projects

• Biomedical imaging devices for early diagnosis

• Nonlinear optical microscopy

Fang Huang

Super-Resolution Microscopy

Recruitment Needs: Two PhD students, 1 postdoc or 1 technician

Area of Research:

Ultra-high resolution 3-dimensional imaging in living specimens

Projects:

• Rapid development of super-resolution microscopy technologies for biological observation in cells.

• Aim to understand the functional mechanisms of cellular processes such as intracellular transport, cell motility, and cell division

• Highly interdisciplinary approach to building novel super-resolution instruments using ideas such as single photon interference, nanofabrication, and adaptive optics.

• Algorithm development to take advantage of concepts in mathematics, statistics, and signal processing, such as sparsity, Bayesian inference, parallelized computing, and machine learning.

Tamara Kinzer-Ursem

Protein Engineering, Chemical Biology, Computational Biology, Neuroscience, Quantitative Tools Development

Recruitment Need: 1-2 PhD students, Computational Biology & Protein Engineering

Project: Calcium-dependent signaling in learning and memory

• Applying theoretical-experimental approaches to the study of calcium-dependent signaling networks that control the strength of synaptic connections in learning and memory

• Development of tools for studying protein function and signaling dynamics using high throughput protein engineering techniques

• Simultaneously working on mathematical representations of protein signaling, enabling the understanding of protein behaviors in the context of larger signaling networks

Russell Main

Skeletal Tissue Biomechanics and Bone Cell Mechanobiology

Recruitment Needs: Two PhD students, 1 postdoc or 1 technician

Projects:

Develop pre-clinical assessment protocol to predict long bone fracture in human and animal athletes

• Development and validation of clinically-accessible and pre-clinical tools to assess bone tissue characteristics associated with skeletal fracture

• Investigate bone cell mechanobiology and tissue repair and employ novel assessment techniques for describing skeletal health

Comparative bone cell mechanobiology: What determines the adaptive potential of the vertebrate skeleton to physical challenge?

• Use measures of in vivo skeletal biomechanics and applied loading protocols to establish cellular mechanisms toinduce bone formation and skeletal adaptation across different vertebrate species.

• Develop novel in vivo and in vitro skeletal loading models characterized by anatomical, finite element (FE), and whole-transcriptome gene expression analyses.

Joseph Rispoli

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Recruitment Needs: Two PhD students and one Postdoc

Area of Research:

High-Field MRI, Multinuclear MR Spectroscopy, Computational Electromagnetics

Projects:

The Rispoli lab addresses challenges of radiofrequency field inhomogeneity and power deposition in tissue in NMR by focusing on novel hardware and methodology for high-field MR, particularly RF coil design, in vivo spectroscopy of multiple nuclei, and computational modeling of RF fields in the human body.

By incorporating multinuclear MR spectroscopy into longitudinal studies of athletes, the Rispoli lab is working to elucidate the molecular biomarkers for the rapid detection of sub-concussive injury and mTBI in youth sports and other activities.