VINSE Colloquium: Student Selected Speaker Dr. Arjun Yodh 04/04/2025
11th Annual VINSE Student Selected Seminar
Arjun Yodh
James M. Skinner Professor of Science and Department Chair
University of Pennsylvania
Imaging and Spectroscopy of (mostly) Brain Using Diffusing Light
04.04.25 | noon
Diffusing light can be used to probe physiology in tissues located far below the body surface. The emerging light fields contain a wealth of diagnostic information about tissue blood flow, blood oxygenation, and oxygen metabolism, about molecular biomarkers such as cytochrome-C oxidase, lipid, and water, and about health biometrics such as intracranial pressure and cerebral autoregulation. I will first introduce the essential diffuse optics measurement tools and paradigms, many of which were hatched in the physics and bioengineering communities. Then I will discuss selected clinical and pre-clinical examples, mostly related to brain, that we have investigated with our collaborators at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Arjun G. Yodh is the James M. Skinner Professor of Science and Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. He was recently Director (2009-2020) of Penn’s Materials Science and Engineering Center (NSF-MRSEC). Areas of ongoing research include: the physics of Soft Matter such as colloids and liquid crystals, and Biophotonics, especially functional imaging and monitoring of living tissues with diffuse light for which he was awarded the 2021 Feld Biophotonics Prize of the Optical Society of America (now Optica). In addition to mentoring more than one hundred PhD students and post-doctoral associates, Yodh has made significant contributions to education, outreach and diversity at the University of Pennsylvania broadly defined, for example leading partnerships with the University of Puerto Rico and research experience programs for undergraduates and high school students/teachers. Yodh graduated from Cornell University (1981) with a B.Sc. in Applied & Engineering Physics. He obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard (1986) under the guidance of Tom Mossberg and then spent two years at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a post-doc working with Steven Chu and Harry Tom. Yodh joined the faculty at Penn in 1988, where he has remained for his entire career.
Previous speakers include:
- Gang Chen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2024
- Peidong Yang, University of California, Berkeley, 2023
- Mark Brongersma, Stanford University, 2022
- John Rogers, Northwestern University, 2020
- Naomi Halas, Rice University, 2019
- George Whitesides, Harvard University, 2018
- Michael Strano, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018
- Paul Weiss, University of California, Los Angeles, 2016
- Ted Sargent, University of Toronto, 2015
- Mostafa El-Sayed, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014