People

Brett E. Bouma, PhD, is Professor of Dermatology and Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard Medical School and Physicist in the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Since starting his lab at MGH in 1998, he has focused a sustained effort toward the development of optical coherence tomography (OCT) and is internationally recognized for important contributions that have made this technology a clinical reality.

Georgia Jones is PhD student in the Health Sciences and Technology program at MIT. She received her BSc in Physics from McMaster University.  She is currently working on developing image processing techniques for intravascular PS-OCT and reconstructing polarimetric signal from using a single input polarization state.

Norman Lippok is an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. He completed his dissertation research at The University of Auckland, New Zealand in 2014. His research focuses on new signatures for functional and molecular tissue contrast, high speed swept sources and stepped frequency combs, with applications in coherent imaging and ranging.

Giulia Mansutti is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. She completed her Ph.D. in Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Padova (Padova, Italy). Giulia joined the Wellman Center for Photomedicine in March 2021, and her research mainly focuses on laser speckle imaging.

Bhaskara Rao Chintada is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 2021. His current research focuses on developing deep learning signal/image processing methods to analyze and enhance optical coherence tomography and ultrasound images.

Kenichiro Otsuka is a Visiting Researcher at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine and CBORT. He received his PhD in Cardiology from the Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine. His current research interests are focused on clinical studies using polarization-sensitive optical frequency domain imaging for diagnosis of coronary artery disease.

Vicente Parot is a Visiting Researcher at MGH and Assistant Professor at Catholic University of Chile, formerly an MGH Research Fellow and recipient of the 2019 OSA Deutsch Fellowship. Vicente completed his PhD in Biophysics at Harvard and in Health Sciences and Technology at MIT. He received the Electrical Engineering and Master of Science degrees at Catholic University of Chile. At the Wellman Center, he develops novel anisotropic contrast mechanisms for OCT and strategies for proximal calibration of multimode fiber endoscopes.  https://ingenieriabiologicaymedica.uc.cl/en/people/faculty/799-vicente-parot

Jian Ren is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging, and a visiting Researcher at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine. He received his PhD from Caltech and before joining the Wellman Center for Photomedicine in 2013. His current research aims to discover and understand the fundamentals of complex biological systems at the ‘ground truth’ level through developing systematic and scalable imaging and mapping methodologies. To this end, his group integrates optical, biochemical, and computational approaches to enable quantitative investigation in fully-assembled biological systems, such as brains.
https://ren-lab.org

Sebastián Ruiz-Lopera is a PhD student in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program at MIT. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics and Master’s degree in Applied Physics from EAFIT University (Colombia). He is currently focused on developing post-processing techniques for improving image quality and contrast in structural and functional OCT.

Ginger Schmidt is a PhD student in the Health Sciences and Technology program at MIT. She received her BSc in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College. She is currently working on OCT applications in elastography.

Maxina Sheft is a PhD student in the Health Sciences and Technology program at MIT. She received her BSc in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Maxina is currently working on advancing polarization-sensitive imaging for applications in neurosurgery.

Tianhui (Cindy) Jie is currently a PhD student in the Health Sciences and Technology program at MIT. She received her Bachelor of Science in Physics with a minor in Design from MIT in the spring of 2023. She is currently working on computational and hardware methods for enhancing structural and functional ophthalmic OCT imaging.

Lia Gomez-Perez is a PhD student in the Health Sciences & Technology program at MIT. She received her BSc in Biomedical Engineering from The Ohio State University. She is currently working on phase imaging with coherent oblique back-illumination and polarimetric imaging through sub-surface self-interference.

Elena Grace Vasquez is a PhD student in the Applied Physics program at Harvard. She received her Bachelors in Physics from UC Berkeley. She is currently working on OCT signal processing methods and applications in women’s health.

Gyeong Hun Kim is a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Wellman Center for Photomedicine. He received his Ph.D degree at the Pusan National University (South Korea). Currently, his research focuses on computational optical imaging through single thin multimode fibers and the development of its tomographic systems for biomedical endoscopic applications.

Po-Yi Lee is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2023. His current research focuses on polarization-sensitive retinal imaging using commercial optical coherence tomography (OCT) instruments.

Ryan McAuley joined the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2024. He completed his PhD in Physics at the University of Galway in 2024. He received his BSc in Physics and Instrumentation from the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (now the Atlantic Technological University). His current research is focused on signal analysis and image processing for functional Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), including OCT Angiography.

Julie Anderson joined the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2024 as a Coordinator. She received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology and Veterinary Technology in 2018 from UMass Amherst. She works to collaborate on animal and human research projects, along with administrative lab goals.

Milen Shishkov is a Senior Research Scientist at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine and Harvard Medical School. After graduating with his Ph.D. in Physics from Temple University in 1999, he joined the Wellman Center where he is currently developing advanced fiber optical probes and interface devices for imaging applications in preclinical and clinical research projects.

David Veysset joined the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at MGH in 2024 as a Physicist. He earned his PhD from MIT in 2016 before completing a postdoc at Stanford University. He then co-founded Aluminio, a climate tech start-up. His research presently focuses on functional OCT and photoacoustic imaging.

Néstor Uribe-Patarroyo is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. He joined the Wellman Center for Photomedicine in 2012 after working in classical and quantum remote sensing. He is focused on bringing additional structural and functional contrast to OCT, with applications in gastrointestinal imaging, and functional retinal and intravascular imaging.

Martin Villiger is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School.  After completing his dissertation research at EPFL in 2010, he joined the Wellman Center for Photomedicine where he is currently leading research in advancing polarization sensitive imaging for applications including intravascular imaging in the coronary arteries.

Taylor Cannon graduated from the Health Sciences and Technology MEMP PhD program at MIT in Spring 2023. She worked on enhancing structural contrast in OCT for clinical diagnostic imaging applications. She previously received her undergraduate training at Vanderbilt University.

Mohammad Haft-Javaherian worked as Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his PhD from Cornell University and joined the Wellman Center for Photomedicine in 2019. His research focused on rigorous and practical machine learning algorithms to analyze intracoronary PS-OCT images.

Pelham Keahey worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School.  He received his undergraduate training in Physics at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas and completed his dissertation research in Applied Physics at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His research focused on utilizing new imaging and molecular diagnostics to improve the early detection of cancer.

Hwidon Lee worked as a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School after having received his Ph.D degree at the Pusan National University (South Korea).  His research focused on development of swept source and high-power pulsed fiber laser for optical coherence tomography and photoacoustic imaging.

Szu-Yu Lee  graduated with a PhD from the Health Sciences and Technology program at MIT in spring 2022. He previously received his Bachelor and Master degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the National Taiwan University. His research focused on optical transmission through optical multi-mode fibers (MMFs) and their potential of being transformed into hair-thin stand-alone imaging probes for endoscopic applications.

Jacque Namati was CBORT’s Director for Program Development, serving as the primary liaison with MGH and Harvard Medical School, collaborators, external users, and prospective researchers. She received her PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Iowa in 2009 and then joined the Wellman Center as a postdoctoral researcher before transitioning into her role at CBORT.

Markus Seeger worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Markus completed his PhD in Medical Life Science and Technology at the Technical University Munich and the Helmholtz Zentrum Munich. He joined the Wellman Center in January 2021 as the recipient of the 2020/2021 OSA Thomas F. Deutsch Fellowship and developed next-generation photoacoustic biomicroscopy for label-free and dynamic interrogations of an organism’s structural, functional, molecular, and metabolic (micro)environment.