I am currently a PhD candidate in the Bioengineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign working in the Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory with Professor Stephen Boppart. My thesis (“Computational methods for fast nonlinear optical microscopy of label-free metabolic dynamics in live organisms”) is focused on various hardware and software improvements for label-free nonlinear optical microscopy to enable faster and higher-throughput imaging. A key aspect of this work has been the development of the SPEED (Single- and multi-photon PEak Event Detection) algorithm to enable the fastest-ever single-detector photon counting in fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (Sorrells et al., 2022) for which I was recently recognized with the 2023 Illinois Innovation Award. I am also a member of the Center for Optical Molecular Imaging (COMI), which is a collaboration between the Biophotonics Imaging Lab and GSK, where I contribute to nonlinear optical microscopy system development.
In August 2024, I will be joining the Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis as an Assistant Professor!
I am passionate about using engineering to improve human health outcomes and to better understand fundamental aspects of biology. My research thus far has allowed me to study diverse specimens such as extracellular vesicles, cancer metabolism, and bacteria and biofilms. I am especially interested in looking into topics of great public health concern such as antibiotic resistance, obesity, and cancer.
I am committed to teaching and mentoring to train the next generation of scientists and engineers. I have had the pleasure of being a teaching assistant for five different courses, mentored multiple undergraduate and graduate students, and spent Summer 2018 teaching STEM at a summer camp in Shanghai, China. I also had the privilege to volunteer at two different science museums and have been involved with various programs to share my research with the non-academic community through talks and lab tours.