Vadim Backman is an American biomedical engineer and the Sachs Family Professor of biomedical engineering at the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. He is also a Professor of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology) and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at Feinberg School of Medicine and is the Associate Director of Research Technology and Infrastructure and Program Leader in Cancer and Physical Sciences at Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Backman was born in the former USSR in 1973 and later emigrated with his family to the United States.[ citation needed ]
Backman received his M.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a PhD in medical engineering and medical physics from Harvard University and MIT. In 2001, he joined Northwestern University's faculty. [1]
Backman also serves as the Associate Director for Research Technology and Infrastructure at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern. He became an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering Fellow in 2010 and a senior member of The Optical Society Board of Directors in 2011. [2] [3]
He helped co-found four start-ups: Preora Diagnostics Inc., ASP Health Inc., Nanocytomics, and American BioOptics. [4]
Since 2003, he has been working on strategies for early detection of cancer by looking for cell changes at a 20 to 50 nanometer scale. [1] In 2019, his lab developed a tool that images blood flow in such a way to see capillaries more closely and measure things like oxygenation and metabolic rate. [5] In 2020, he led a study that noted that countries with higher COVID-19 mortality rates also had higher levels of Vitamin D deficiency. [6] In 2021, Backman published a paper in Science Advances about the construction of cells on a genomic level and how this impacts their ability to deal with external stressors. [7]
Backman collaborates with and is married to civil and environmental engineer Luisa Marcelino. [8]
Allen Taflove was a full professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering, since 1988. Since 1972, he pioneered basic theoretical approaches, numerical algorithms, and applications of finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) computational solutions of Maxwell's equations. He coined the descriptors "finite difference time domain" and "FDTD" in the 1980 paper, "Application of the finite-difference time-domain method to sinusoidal steady-state electromagnetic penetration problems." In 1990, he was the first person to be named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in the FDTD area. Taflove was the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Electromagnetics Award with the following citation: "For contributions to the development and application of finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) solutions of Maxwell's equations across the electromagnetic spectrum." He was a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Optical Society (OSA). His OSA Fellow citation reads: "For creating the finite-difference time-domain method for the numerical solution of Maxwell's equations, with crucial application to the growth and current state of the field of photonics."
Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) is a nationally ranked academic medical center located on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus in Streeterville, Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship campus for Northwestern Medicine and the primary teaching hospital for the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Affiliated institutions also located on campus include the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital with Level I pediatric trauma care and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a leader in physical medicine and rehabilitation.
Robert Lee "Bobby" Satcher Jr. is an American orthopedic surgeon, chemical engineer, and former NASA astronaut. He participated in 2 spacewalks during STS-129, accumulating 12hrs 19min of EVA time. Satcher holds two doctorates and has received numerous awards and honors as a surgeon and engineer.
Mehmet Toner is a Turkish biomedical engineer. He is currently the Helen Andrus Benedict Professor of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School, with a joint appointment as professor at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST).
Bruce J. Tromberg is an American photochemist and a leading researcher in the field of biophotonics. He is the director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Before joining NIH, he was Professor of Biomedical Engineering at The Henry Samueli School of Engineering and of Surgery at the School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine. He was the principal investigator of the Laser Microbeam and Medical Program (LAMMP), and the Director of the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic at Irvine. He was a co-leader of the Onco-imaging and Biotechnology Program of the NCI Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at Irvine.
Dean Ho is a Provost's Chair Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Pharmacology, Director of the N.1 Institute for Health, and Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He was previously a professor at UCLA, and associate professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering in the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Full Member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University, Illinois, United States.
Duane Frederick Bruley is an American researcher, entrepreneur, and academician.
Ravi V. Bellamkonda is an Indian-American biomedical engineer and academic administrator. Since 2021, he has served as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Bellamkonda was previously Vinik Dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University.
Rebecca Richards-Kortum is an American bioengineer and the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University. She is a professor in the departments of Bioengineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and she is the Director of Rice 360°: Institute for Global Health, and the Founder of Beyond Traditional Borders. She is the Director of the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, and serves as the advisor to the Provost on health-related research.
John X. J. Zhang is a professor at Thayer School of Engineering of Dartmouth College, and an investigator in the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Before joining Dartmouth, he was an associate professor with tenure in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas of Austin. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University, California in 2004, and was a research scientist in systems biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before joining the faculty at UT Austin in 2005. Zhang is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and a recipient of the 2016 NIH Director's Transformative Research Award.
Guillermo Antonio Ameer is the Daniel Hale Williams Professor of biomedical engineering at the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and Surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University and is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Society, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Materials Research Society, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is an engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur.
Anita Mahadevan-Jansen is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and holds the Orrin H. Ingram Chair in Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Her research considers the development of optical techniques for clinical diagnosis and surgical guidance, particularly using Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy. She serves on the Board of Directors of SPIE, and is a Fellow of SPIE, The Optical Society, Society for Applied Spectroscopy, and the American Society for Lasers in Medicine and Surgery. She was elected to serve as the 2020 Vice President of SPIE. With her election, Mahadevan-Jansen joined the SPIE presidential chain and served as President-Elect in 2021 and the Society's President in 2022.
Nimmi Ramanujam is the Robert W. Carr Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and a faculty member in the Global Health Institute and the Department of Pharmacology & Cell Biology at Duke University. She is the director of the Center of Global Women's Health Technologies (GWHT) and founder of Zenalux Biomedical Inc. and Calla Health. Ramanujam has spent the last two decades developing precision diagnostics and more recently precision therapeutics for breast and cervical cancer, with a focus on addressing global health disparities. She has more than 20 patents and over 150 publications for screening, diagnostic, and surgical applications, and has raised over $30M of funding to pursue these innovations through a variety of funding mechanisms, including NIH R01s and R21s, NIH Bioengineering Partnerships, NCI Academic Industry Partnerships, NIH Small Business grants and USAID funding. As the founding director of the Center for Global Women's Health Technologies at Duke University, she has developed a consortium of over 50+ partners including international academic institutions and hospitals, non-governmental organizations, ministries of health, and commercial partners; this consortium is working to ensure that the technologies developed at the center are adopted by cancer control programs in geographically and economically diverse healthcare settings.
Audrey K. Ellerbee Bowden is an American engineer and Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips Chancellor's Faculty Fellow at Vanderbilt University, as well as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. She is a Fellow of Optica, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE).
Irene Georgakoudi is a Greek biophysicist and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University, where her work focuses on developing non-invasive medical imaging techniques based on optical spectroscopy for applications in medical diagnostics and therapeutics.
Jennifer Kehlet Barton is an American biomedical engineer who is Director of the BIO5 Institute at the University of Arizona. Barton develops optical techniques for the detection and treatment of cancer.
Mitra J.Z. Hartmann is a professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering at the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. She specializes in robotics, sensory acquisition behaviors, sensorimotor integration, and neuroethology. Her lab focuses on translating sensory signals felt by whiskers to robotics.
Chenzhong Li is a Chinese-born Canadian & American biomedical engineer, chemist, inventor, professor, journal editor and program director who is currently a professor in the Center of Cellular and Molecular Diagnosis at Tulane University School of Medicine. Li is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics (Elsevier) and the associate editors of journals RESEARCH (AAAS) and Biosensors (MDPI).
Catherine M. Klapperich is an American biomedical engineer noted for her research on diagnostics and precision medicine. She is currently professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, with additional appointments in materials science & engineering and mechanical engineering. Klapperich serves as the director of research for the DAMP Laboratory at BU. Klapperich was previously the director of the NIH NIBIB Center for Future Technologies in Cancer Care as part of the Point-of Care-Research Technologies Network.
Light scattering spectroscopy (LSS) is a spectroscopic technique typically used to evaluate morphological changes in epithelial cells in order to study mucosal tissue and detect early cancer and precancer.