Emerging Technology and Best Practices Seminar Series

Friday, November 30, 2007
Optical Imaging for Medicine and Biology: Applications in Cancer Detection
8:00AM-4:00PM, Cocktail Hour 4:00-5:00PM
The Photonics Center
8 Saint Mary's Street, 9th Floor
Boston, MA 02215

Host:
Professor Jerome Mertz, Department of Biomedical Engineering

Boston University
College of Engineering
44 Cummington Street
Boston, MA 02215

Emerging Technology and Best Practices Seminar Series

Short Biography of Michael S. Feld

Professor Michael S. Feld was educated at MIT, where he is a Professor of Physics and directs the George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory. Professor Feld is active in various aspects of laser physics, spectroscopy and biomedicine. His optical physics research spans the fields of molecular and atomic spectroscopy, laser-nuclear interactions and the study of dynamical and radiative processes in atoms and molecules. Much of this research has been conducted at the MIT Laser Research Facility, the center for physical science research using lasers and spectroscopy that he founded in 1979. 

Beginning in 1965, Professor Feld conducted a series of experiments (with Professor Ali Javan) to study the saturation spectroscopy of Doppler-broadened three level systems and the role played by coherent Raman processes. This provided a foundation for two photon Doppler-free spectroscopy, lasers without inversion, and electromagnetically induced transparency. In 1973, he made the first experimental observation of superradiance, the collective spontaneous emission of an assembly of excited atoms. In 1987, he began a series of experiments to study the radiation of a single, isolated atom in an optical resonator, which led to the first demonstration of enhanced and suppressed spontaneous emission and radiative level shifts in an open optical resonator. In 1994 he developed the single atom laser, a fundamental system in which a two-level atom is coupled to a single mode of the optical field.

Professor Feld is also active in the field of application of lasers, light and spectroscopy to biology and medicine. He directs the Laser Biomedical Research Center at MIT, an NIH-supported center that he founded in 1985, where he pursues research on the use of fluorescence, reflectance, elastic light scattering, Raman spectroscopy and optical interferometry to characterize and image biological cells and tissues. His research contributions have been both basic and applied. In 1985, he showed that fluorescence could be used to diagnosis atherosclerosis, laying the basis for the field of spectral diagnosis of disease. In 1991, he demonstrated that Raman spectroscopy could be used to analyze biological tissue. This led to its clinical use, in 2006, in diagnosing atherosclerosis and breast cancer. In 1998, his group developed the technique of light scattering spectroscopy for measuring the size distribution of epithelial cell nuclei to characterize pre-cancerous change, and in 2001, the method of tri-modal spectroscopy, a clinical technique that combines fluorescence and reflectance for spectral diagnosis. Beginning in 2001, he began exploring the use of optical interferometry to study nanometer length changes and small-scale dynamical processes in biological systems. This has led, in 2007, to development of a method for creating 3D tomograpic images of living biological cells.

Professor Feld was selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 1973. In June 1989, he chaired the Ninth International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy at Bretton Woods, NH, and in July 1992 he co-chaired the Gordon Conference in Lasers in Biology and Medicine. He received the Thompson Award in 1991 for the development of biomedical Raman spectroscopy and the Vinci of Excellence (France) in 1995 for development of the single atom laser. In 1992, he was the Wolk Visitor and Lecturer at Colgate University. He was 1996 distinguished Baetjer Colloquium speaker, Princeton University. He was named the 2003 recipient of the Lamb Medal of the Physics of Quantum Electronics Society, which cited his work in biological physics that involves the close interplay between fundamental and applied science.

Professor Feld is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the Society of Sigma Xi, the American Society for Laser Surgery and Medicine, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a Research Member of the Joint Faculty of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health, Science and Technology. He is chairman of Newton Laboratories (Woburn, MA), and serves on the advisory board of the Center for Functional Neuroimaging Technologies at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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