Phase II I/UCRC Trustees of Boston University: Center on Biophotonic Sensors and Systems

Trustees Of Boston University, Boston

Investigators

Abstract

CBSS operates at the intersection of life sciences and photonics engineering and focuses on precompetitive research that provides the enabling technologies for advanced methods to detect, sense and identify biological properties, conditions or changes at the molecular, cellular and subcellular level. These innovations will address solutions in the areas of Disease Diagnosis, Drug Efficacy Testing & Monitoring, Drug Discovery, and Food & Water Safety through long-term partnerships with industry members. During Phase II, research efforts will continue at Boston University (lead institution) and UC Davis (university site) to develop collaborations with faculty across our campuses whose research is relevant to the Center?s mission. BU?s Creating the Societal Engineer, a concept of a social consciousness and appreciation for how products advance our quality of life while creating jobs and economic opportunity, resonates well with a primary mission of the Center to educate a diverse pipeline of trained scientist and engineers. Students have an opportunity to directly participate in the technology transfer process and with industry learn to identify applications and define areas of greatest needs, evaluate new technologies and research tools, and pursue research that can be applied to solving real-world challenges and improving healthcare outcomes. As CBSS grows, the Center intends to capitalize on a trend by companies in the life sciences sector to accelerate innovation through collaborative research and university-led innovations, specifically in the area of biophotonic sensing. The Center's value to the membership is based on the ability to deliver pre-competitive research that can be adapted to align with a member?s product portfolio plans. This high priority research and product directed research typically remains the focus of each individual company, but collectively, the membership values the Center for: - Adding to the breadth and diversity of a member's research portfolio. - Working on pre-competitive technologies that could add some benefits in the future. - Working on alternative approaches that have merit but which a member company has neither, the time or resources to pursue. This also helps a member better position their existing product/technology approaches. - Providing exposure to emerging areas of research that may be outside the company?s domain, thus adding to a member?s innovation capability. The research projects, guided by industry strategic oversight, will lead to breakthroughs in understanding cell/host interactions, new biomarker discovery, point-of-care and interoperation diagnostics, personalized cancer treatment, and many other technologies that will improve the quality of healthcare. The Center?s research is aligned with three overlapping thrust areas: Bio-Imaging, Optical Diagnostics and Analytics, and each of these thrust areas has a component in Systems, Sensors & Devices, and Materials & Biology. The goal of the Analytics research is to embed data retrieval and computing processing power in imaging and diagnostic tools to develop an understanding of biological, genetic, behavioral and environmental data gathered so that healthcare decisions can be made down to the individual level. At BU recent developments in high-resolution tip-tilt-position deformable mirrors (TPP-DM) combined with computation and machine learning algorithms demonstrate the combinations of bio-imaging and analytics for applications such as imaging of blood and tissue samples or cell sorting.