Vasan Venugopalan, ScD, Chair and Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, UC Irvine
Speaker:
Vasan Venugopalan, ScD
Professor and Chair, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
Faculty Host: Carrie Mills
Title: Pulsed Laser Microbeams for Cellular Mechanotransduction and Microrheology
Abstract:
Pulsed laser microbeam irradiation provides powerful tool for cell manipulation and modification due to its ability to deposit energy with high spatial localization. To date laser microbeams have been commonly applied for surgical applications and cellular manipulation such as targeted cell lysis and molecular delivery. Here I will present new applications of pulsed laser microbeams as a perburative tool to probe cellular sensitivity to mechanical stimuli and to measure of local mechanical properties in 3-D engineered tissues. The simple integration of laser microbeam with standard biological microscopy platforms offers an attractive tool for fundamental studies in mechanobiology and for high-throughput screening.
Bio:
Vasan Venugopalan is Professor and Department Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He holds joint appointments with the Beckman Laser Institute as well as the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. His lab examines the use of pulsed laser microbeams in cell biology and biotechnology and also develops analytical and Monte Carlo computational methods for the simulation of light propagation in cells and tissue. Prof. Venugopalan has also prioritized interdisciplinary Biophotonics education. He led UC Irvine’s development of an NSF-sponsored Interdisciplinary Graduate Education and Training (IGERT) program in Multiscale Biophotonics that supported 30 PhD students across the Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He has also led two NIH Short Course training programs in Computational Biophotonics and Multiscale Biophotonics. Collectively, these programs have impacted over 200 Biophotonics graduate, post-doctoral, and industrial researchers worldwide.
