Department of Defense Fellow
Matt joined the laboratories in 2009 after a working at SABIC Innovative Plastics (Formerly General Electric). Matthew received a B.S. in Chemistry (2004) and a B.A. in Biology (2004) from St. John Fisher College (Rochester, NY) and earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry (2008) from the University of Michigan where he used Raman Spectroscopy, novel optical probe configurations, and multivariate signal processing to noninvasively recover spectra of targets below several millimeters of light scattering material including plastics and tissue. His current research includes building instrumentation for spectroscopic mapping, imaging and tomography. Matthew’s interests involve integrating IR and Raman methods in a multi model-approach to obtain accurate disease diagnosis of excised tissue. Towards this effort he has developed Dark Field Raman microscopy as a method for rejecting signal from substrate fluorescence. He has also recently applied his expertise in transmission Raman spectroscopy to analysis of Soybeans in a pilot study to assess the feasibility of using Raman measurements to quantify the concentrations of protein, oils, and amino acids in whole soybeans. Other research interests involve working with spectral basis sets to quantify tissue components by using multivariate signal processing. Matts website can be found here .

Carle Foundation Hospital-Beckman Institute Fellow
Michael joined 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.

Department of Computer Science and Computational Science and Engineering Program
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 currently working on developing automated classification methods for prostate cancer using heterogeneous data (H&E stained and FTIR). Jin Tae is co-advised by Prof. Saurabh Sinha in computer science.

Department of Bioengineering
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 cellular and tissue engineering as models for disease progression, drug diffusion and FTIR spectroscopic imaging of static and dynamic biologic processes.

Department of Bioengineering and Medical Scholars Program
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.

Department of Bioengineering
Matthew earned his BS in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of Michigan in 2010. His research focuses on developing novel biomedical Raman instrumentation for cell and tissue imaging. His goals are to achieve greater chemical and spatial specificity for non-invasive Raman techniques for use in diagnosing cancer and other biological abnormalities.

Department of Bioengineering
Claude works on developing novel infrared spectroscopic imaging instrumentation.

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department of Bioengineering
Lauren is a junior in bioengineering. Her current project involves designing three-dimensional cell culture models of breast tumors and analyzing stromal-epithelial interactions and their effects on cancer initiation and progression.

Department of Bioengineering
Mark is going into his Junior year in bioengineering, with a specialization in cell and tissue engineering. He is interested in inter-cellular interactions in cancer and the effects of the micro environment on these interactions and cancer progression.

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. Bryn joined Creare Inc. upon leaving the 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.

Spencer obtained his bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering with distinction from Purdue in 2007. Spencer received a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering working with Prof. Minh Do from ECE and Prof. Bhargava. His general research interests include Multidimensional Signal Processing, Wavelets, Compressed Sensing, and Chemical Imaging. His MS thesis work focused on sparse reconstruction, unmixing, and super-resolution of Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopic data. Spencer joined Cisco upon graduation.

Department of Bioengineering
Caroline joined gradaute school at the University of Illinoin on an IGERT fellowship.

Department of Bioengineering
Rohun focused on engineering multilayered nanoparticle structures for use in novel cancer diagnostic methods being developed by the Bhargava Lab. He joined graduate school at Wahington University, St. Louis.

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

Undergraduate Student, Bioengineering