OTHER SEMINARS

Biophotonics Focused on Grand Challenges in Medicine and Bioscience

Dennis L. Matthews, PhD

Date:               Tuesday November 25, 2008
Time:              12:10 noon -12:50pm + Discussions until 1:30pm
Location:        Room 1003 Kemper
 
Speaker: Dennis L. Matthews, PhD Director NSF Center for Biophotonics Science & Technology University of California at Davis; Associate Director, UC Davis Cancer Center; Professor, School of Medicine & College of Engineering University of California, Davis

Title:

Biophotonics Focused on Grand Challenges in Medicine and Bioscience

Abstract:

Biophotonics, the application of photon-based technologies and methods to bioscience and medicine, is becoming an increasingly important means of diagnosing and treating disease as well as studying the underlying mechanisms which govern how living organisms function. There is also now a large community of researchers around the globe who are actively creating and applying biophotonics tools and methods. Industry is also a major player in the field of biophotonics since it represents a ~$50B/yr global market sector and there is a constant need to develop, manufacture and distribute biomedical and scientific instrumentation. Despite these efforts there are many areas in bioscience and medicine that can benefit from a concerted and global interdisciplinary effort in both research and translation of biophotonics devices, software, fluorescent probes and methods. Some examples of the challenges include the development of portable and ruggedized point-of-care technologies for diagnosing and treating patients in remote areas or even metropolitan regions in the aftermath of a pandemic event. Non-invasive biophotonic devices are well suited to and would be especially valuable for these applications. New methods of imaging that do not rely on large instrumentation or ionizing radiation are needed for providing critical diagnoses for stroke and traumatic brain injury victims. Of course, there also needs for of early cancer diagnosis from analyzing blood samples and, of most importance, a means of treating metastatic disease through molecularbased targeting of cancer cells. Treatment of infections using photodynamic therapy can also be explored as a means to avoid use of antibiotics. Many other major challenges arise in bioscience and medicine including characterization and distillation of stem cells, identification and destruction of cancer stem cells, image guidance of ultra-precision surgery, to name but a few opportunities for the application of biophotonics tools and methods.

In my presentation, I will review some highlights for the field of biophotonics and then talk about new opportunities for research as well as medical and scientific device development. I will also describe a new “Biophotonics for Life Consortium” we in the community are forming and how it can provide a coordinated global effort to meet some of the grand challenges that continue to exist in medicine and bioscience.

Biography:

Dr. Matthews is Principal Investigator and Director of the National Science Foundation’s Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology. Dr. Matthews is also the Associate Director and Biomedical Technology Program Leader for the UC Davis Cancer Center that received NCI designation in 2002. Dr. Matthews is also responsible for the development of industrial and medical applications of Lawrence Livermore National Lab Technology, especially for the prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as diabetes, stroke, brain trauma, chronic pain and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Matthews leads a multi-directorate Center within Livermore whose mission is to develop medical devices in collaboration with industry. Current projects and those already successfully transferred to industry include: an opto-acoustic recanalization device for treating ischemic stroke; a miniature x-ray source which is mounted on a microcatheter and used to treat coronary artery restenosis; micropower impulse radar for numerous medical diagnostics including differentiating hemorrhagic vs. ischemic stroke; an implantable, continuous glucose monitor; a compact proton accelerator for radiation therapy; as well as ultra-short-pulse duration laser microsurgery devices.________
He received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1974 from the University of Texas at Austin. His thesis work dealt with the understanding the radiative and collisional ionization properties of energetic heavy ions moving through gases and solids. Dr. Matthews is an expert on the radiative properties of ions in plasmas as well as in the conversion of laser light into x-rays. Dr. Matthews is also an expert in developing optically based biosensors and medical devices.____
Dr. Matthews has written well over 200 publications in the scientific literature and holds numerous patents, especially for medical devices and commercial applications of lasers. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America and is a co-recipient of the 1990 Division of Plasma Physics Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research. He is also a member of the American Physical Society, Optical Society of America, the Society of Photographical

Engineering Computation & Electrical Interfaces into Living Systems

Caroline Ajo-Franklin

Date:               Tuesday October 21, 2008
Time:              12:10 noon -12:50pm + Discussions until 1:30pm
Location:        Room 1003 Kemper
 
Speaker: Caroline Ajo-Franklin, Staff Scientist, The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Title:

Engineering Computation & Electrical Interfaces into Living Systems  
ECE overlap: Devices based on bio-organisms, reprogrammable microbes for technological devices, organic memory devices, organic-inorganic interfaces,   

Abstract:

Over billions of years, organisms have honed precise synthesis and assembly of nanoscale machinery to perform diverse functions such as sensing, computation, and control of charge flow. The explosion of knowledge in cellular biology and the powerful tools of synthetic biology now allow us to alter such complex assemblies to perform new functions with ever-greater specificity. I will describe our overarching approach to reprogram microbes into technological devices and two specific applications: memory devices in living cells and microbe-to-electrode connections.

Bio: Caroline Ajo-Franklin received her PhD in 2004 in Biophysical Chemistry from Stanford University and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Synthetic Biology, Harvard Medical School. Since 2007, she is a Staff Scientist, The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Her research includes Electrical communication between living and non-living systems, Self-assembly of nanocircuits, Biotic control of geologic carbon dioxide

Supported Lipid Membranes – Potentials and Pitfalls

Professor Tonya Kuhl

Date:               Tuesday October 14, 2008
Time:              12:00 noon, Lunch at 12:30pm
Location:        Room 1003 Kemper
 
Speaker: Professor Tonya Kuhl, Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and BME, UC Davis

Title:

 “Supported Lipid Membranes – Potentials and Pitfalls”
ECE overlap:    sensor materials and technology, sensor networks, information processing, carrier/ion transport

Abstract

In nature, membranes perform several functions of the living cell from selective transport and recognition, to simple sequestration. In general, the membrane consists of a single bilayer or in special cases, such as the lung surfactants, a single monolayer. Using powerful new neutron and x-ray sources, the techniques of reflectivity and grazing incidence diffraction permit us to obtain precise structural information for single, substrate supported membranes in bulk water. Utilization of supported membranes for protein crystallization and biosensor development will be highlighted.
 
Format: A brief talk for faculty and students will be followed by discussions over a brown-bag, pizza lunch for faculty.

The Impact of Quasi-equally Spaced Sensor Layouts on Field Reconstruction

Prof. Emanuele Viterbo

Wednesday, October 29 
Time: 12:00 Noon
Location: Room 1007, Eng III
(Civil & Environmental Eng.)

Speaker: Prof. Emanuele Viterbo

Title

The Impact of Quasi-equally Spaced Sensor Layouts on Field Reconstruction

We consider wireless sensor networks whose nodes are randomly deployed   and, 
thus, provide an irregular sampling of the sensed field. The field is   assumed 
to be bandlimited; a sink node collects the data gathered by the   sensors and 
reconstructs the field by using a technique based on linear filtering. 
By taking  the mean square error (MSE) as performance metric, we   evaluate the 
effect of quasi-equally spaced sensor layouts on the quality of the reconstructed signal. 
The MSE is derived through asymptotic analysis for different sensor   
spatial 
distributions, and for two of them we are able to obtain an   
approximate closed form expression. 
The case of uniformly distributed sensors is also 
considered for the sake of comparison. 
The validity of our asymptotic analysis is shown by comparison against   
numerical results 
and it is proven to hold even for a small number of nodes. 
Finally, with the help of a simple example, we show the key role that 
our results play in the deployment of sensor networks.

Biography

Emanuele Viterbo was born in Torino, Italy, in 1966. He received his   degree (Laurea) in Electrical Engineering in 1989 and his Ph.D. in 1995 in Electrical Engineering, both from the Politecnico di Torino,   Torino, Italy.  From 1990 to 1992 he was with the European Patent Office, The Hague,   The Netherlands, as a patent examiner in the field of dynamic   recording and error-control coding. Between 1995 and 1997 he held a   post-doctoral position in the Dipartimento di Elettronica of the   Politecnico di Torino in Communications Techniques over Fading   Channels. He became Associate Professor at Politecnico di Torino,   Dipartimento di Elettronica in 2005 and since November 2006 he is Full   Professor in Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informatica e Sistemistica   (DEIS) at Università della Calabria, Italy. In 1993 he was visiting researcher in the Communications Department of   DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. In 1994 and 1995 he was visiting the   École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (E.N.S.T.), Paris.   In 1998 he was visiting researcher in the Information Sciences   Research Center of AT&T Research, Florham Park, NJ. In 2003 he was   visiting researcher at the Maths Department of EPFL, Lausanne,   Switzerland. In 2004 he was visiting researcher at the   Telecommunications Department of UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil. In 2005 he was visiting researcher at the ITR of UniSA, Adelaide, Australia. Dr. Emanuele Viterbo was awarded a NATO Advanced Fellowship in 1997   from the Italian National Research Council. His main research   interests are in lattice codes for the Gaussian and fading channels,   algebraic coding theory, algebraic space-time coding, digital   terrestrial television broadcasting, and digital magnetic recording. He is Associate Editor of /IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, European Transactions on Telecommunications/ and /Journal of   Communications and Networks.