logo

HOW WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE

OUR MISSION


"Our work focuses on the use of nonlinear optical interactions between femtosecond-duration laser pulses and biological material as a tool for precise ablation of structures and quantitative observation of dynamical processes in live biological samples."


Want to join the team? Click here to see current opportunities


icon_research   FEATURES

Our lab is interested in studying the contribution of multiple physiological systems to disease initiation and progression, with applications in neurodegenerative disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.  We would like to understand how the vascular, immune, inflammatory systems and cells native to a tissue interact in these diseases. A major challenge in such work is that model systems such as cell culture or even organotypic tissue culture cannot fully recapitulate all the different cell types involved in disease, so in vivo studies are required. However, it is experimentally difficult to study and manipulate cell-level dynamics in live animals. Recently, we have worked to develop technologies such as improved imaging using multiphoton microscopy that work in whole animals and have sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to quantify cellular dynamics. We also now have tools, femtosecond laser ablation, to produce targeted disruption with cellular-scale precision.

icon_paper   PUBLICATIONS

Extracellular vesicles incorporating retrovirus-like capsids for the enhanced packaging and systemic delivery of mRNA into neurons (2024)

MousePZT: A simple, reliable, low-cost device for vital sign monitoring and respiratory gating in mice under anesthesia (2024)

Circumscribing Laser Cuts Attenuate Seizure Propagation in a Mouse Model of Focal Epilepsy (2024)

Intravital Multiphoton Microscopy Captures Dynamics of the Beating Heart (2024)

Quasi-analytic solution for real-time multi-exposure speckle imaging of tissue perfusion (2023)

Photo Credit: Dave Burbank, Kathryn Henion, or Schaffer-Nishimura lab members