Barbara Shinn-Cunningham Joins New Neurophotonics Center as Founding Faculty Member
With leadership from Mass General Hospital’s David Boas, who will act as Founding Director, BU has announced the new Neurophotonics Center, dedicated to the emerging field. Neurophotonics uses light technology to study the brain in real-time. Building on existing capacity in BU’s Photonics Center and Biomedical Engineering Department, the new center will allow faculty from different areas to come together to answer hard questions, especially in regards to how strokes, migraines, Alzheimer’s disease, and other neurological afflictions affect the brain.
The center will work with doctoral students through a grant from the National Science Foundation, a $2.9 million Research Traineeship grant for neurophotonics. The 5 year grant will allow graduate students to participate in a new program focused on using light to study and understand brain function. Recruiting from various departments and schools across the BU community, the center aims to advance new technologies in order to understand the brain.
In addition to David Boas, faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences, Sargent College, and the College of Engineering will join the center. Director of the Photonics Center, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and a member of the Steering Committee for the Hariri Institute, Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, will be among the founding faculty members. Shinn-Cunningham specializes in auditory neurology and is the Director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology.