Kirill V. Larin, Ph.D.
Director of the laboratory
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Dr. Kirill V. Larin is Cullen College of Engineering Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston. He also holds joint appointments in the Departments of Physiology and Biophysics at Baylor College of Medicine and Department of Optics and Biophysics at the Saratov State University (SSU) in Russia. Larin received his first M.S. in Laser Physics and Mathematics from the SSU (1995), his second M.S. in Cellular Physiology and Molecular Biophysics (2001) and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (2002). His research contributions are in Biomedical Optics and Biophotonics and development and application of various optical methods for noninvasive and nondestructive imaging and diagnostics of tissues and cells. Larin is the recipient of Presidential Award from Russian President Boris Yeltsin recognizing his significant contributions in optics. He has also received Wallace Coulter Young Investigator Translation Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Houston Society for Engineers in Medicine and Biology, and Herbert Allen Award from American Society for Mechanical Engineers. Larin currently serves as an Instructor for short courses on Tissue Optics for the Optical Society of America. He is Fellow of SPIE and OSA.
Salavat Aglyamov, Ph.D.
Research Associate Professor
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Dr. Salavat Aglyamov received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in applied mathematics in 1991 and 1993, respectively, from Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. He received his Ph.D. degree in biophysics in 1999 from the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics, Pushchino, Moscow region, Russia. From 2001 to 2002 he worked in the Biomedical Ultrasonics Lab at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, as a postdoctoral fellow, where he was engaged in mathematical modeling of behavior of the soft biological tissue under externally applied loading and as a research associate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He joined University of Houston as Reseach Assistant Professor of Mechanocal Engineering in June 2017. He has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and chapters in two books. His research interests are in the areas of tissue biomechanics, elasticity imaging, and applied mathematics.
Manmohan Singh, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
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Dr. Singh earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 2018 and completed the Gulf Coast Consortia/National Library of Medicine Postdoctoral Training Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science in 2020. Dr. Singh’s research is focused on high-resolution multimodal imaging combining functional and structural imaging, noninvasive optical imaging, and tissue biomechanics.
Postdoctoral Researchers & Staff
Alexander Schill, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist
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Dr. Alexander Schill received his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2006 and has more than 14 years of experience working with optics & lasers. Before coming to UH he worked for 6 years in R&D at Coherent, Inc. in Santa Clara, CA. His research interests include biomedical and adaptive optics, state-of-the-art laser sources, and development of new OCT applications.
Achuth Nair, Ph.D.
NLM Training Program Postdoctoral Fellow
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Dr. Achuth Nair received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Houston in 2022. He is currently a fellow of the National Library of Medicine Training Program in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science. His research interests include structural and functional imaging using optical coherence tomography and tissue biomechanics.
Maryam Hatami, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral fellow
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Dr. Maryam Hatami received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Sciences and Research, Iran in 2012. She is currently a Postdoctoral research Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Her research interests include nonlinear optics, optical spectroscopy, optical and optoacoustic imaging and sensing, image processing and data analysis.
Andrew L. Lopez III, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral fellow
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Dr. Andrew Lopez received his Ph.D. in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics from Baylor College of Medicine in the lab of Dr. Irina Larina. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston in the lab of Dr. Kirill Larin. His research interests include the use of biophotonic approaches to investigate topics in developmental biology using the mouse model. Dr. Lopez is currently working on developing multi-modality approaches such as Optical Coherence Tomography integrated with Light sheet microscopy to investigate neural tube closure defects using mouse and organoid models.
Amandeep Singh, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral fellow
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Dr. Amandeep Singh received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, India in the Medical Optics and Sensors (MOS) Laboratory under the supervision of Prof. Renu John. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston in the lab of Dr. Kirill Larin. His research work is dedicated to developing an optical system for the biomechanical characterization of biological tissues in ex-vivo and in-vivo conditions. His research interests include optical coherence tomography, medical imaging, and image processing.
Graduate Students
Harshdeep Singh Chawla
Ph.D. Candidate
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Harshdeep Singh Chawla is a Ph.D. candidate in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston. He completed his Master’s in Computer Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, NY and Bachelor’s in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Rajiv Gandhi Technical University, India. Presently he is working on Parallel computing algorithm for Bio-medical imaging, that uses CUDA. His areas of interest include GPU Computing, Biomedical Imaging and Embedded Systems.
Christian Zevallos Delgado
Ph.D. Candidate
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Christian received his Master of Science in Bioinformatics and Molecular Biochemistry from the George Washington University in 2020 and Bachelor of Engineering in Biotechnology from the Catholic University of Santa María, Arequipa-Peru in 2016. His past research involves the use of computational methods for protein modeling and gene expression analysis in cancer. His research interest involves the assessment of biomechanical properties in developmental biology using mouse and zebrafish embryos utilizing Reverberant Optical Coherence Elastography.
Jessica Gutierrez
Ph.D. Candidate
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Jessica received her bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences from The University of Texas at El Paso. Her current research involves utilizing optical coherence tomography to analyze the effects of simultaneous alcohol and cannabinoid use during pregnancy on the functional morphology of the murine fetal brain.
Mohammad Mobarak Karim
Ph.D. Candidate
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Md Mobarak Karim received his M.S. in Biomedical Science and Engineering from Gwangju Institute of Science and Engineering, South Korea in December 2020. Prior to that, he completed his B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh in 2018. His research focus is on developing a multimodal imaging system for embryonic structural and molecular imaging, which combines optical coherence tomography, one-photon, and two-photon light-sheet techniques.
Andres Bryan
Ph.D. Candidate
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Andres Bryan received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston in May of 2021. He shortly joined the Biomedical Optics Lab due to his interests in optics and the future of medical imaging. He currently studies corneal biomechanics utilizing Heartbeat Optical Coherence Elastography. His future research interests include utilizing Compression Optical Coherence Elastography to study various tissue biomechanics.
Sajedeh Saeidi Fard
Ph.D. Candidate
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Sajedeh received her Master of Science in Photonics in 2019 from the Shahis Beheshti University, Tehran-Iran and Bachelor of Engineering in Optics and Laser Engineering from the Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman-Iran in 2015. Her past research involves the application of two-dimensional plasmonic biosensing platform for cellular activity detection under laser stimulation. Her research interest involves the assessment of biomechanical properties in developmental biology using mouse and zebrafish embryos utilizing high-resolution Brillouin microscopy.
Mohammad Dehshiri
Ph.D. Student
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Mohammad Dehshiri received his Master’s in physics with a focus on photonics from the University of Isfahan, Iran. He joined the Biomedical Optics Lab as a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Dr. Kirill Larin. Currently his research is focused on Optical Coherence Tomography/Elastography of mouse cornea and Brillouin microscopy. His research interests are biophotonics and investigating on optical and mechanical properties of biological tissues.
Sharon Shajan
Ph.D. Student
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Sharon Shajan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston. She received her Master’s degree in Optical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, India. Before coming to UH, she worked on Frequency Domain Photoacoustic Imaging at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Leah Lewis
Ph.D. Student
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Leah Lewis received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Hampton University in 2022. During her undergraduate tenure, Leah conducted research under D.O.D. laboratories including the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, as well as within chemical engineering department at Hampton University. Her current research interests are optical coherence tomography and multi-photon microscopy for imaging biological tissues and studying embryo development.
Pavel Nikitin
Ph.D. Student
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Pavel Nikitin completed his residency in pathology in Burdenko Neurosurgical Research Center (Moscow, Russia) in 2019. He received his Ph.D. in pathology in Brain and Neurotechnology (Moscow, Russia) center in 2022, his field of research included the intratumoral molecular and cellular heterogeneity of glioblastomas, molecular mechanisms of memory and amnesia, and molecular and cellular mechanisms of atherosclerosis. His current research interest covers optical coherent elastography use for the systemic sclerosis study, elastographic aspects of the internal molecular and cellular heterogeneity of physiological and pathological brain processes, as well as the relationship of molecular modifications and mechanical cells properties.
Arnab Paul
Ph.D. Student
Arnab Paul received his M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from University of Dhaka and B.S. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology. Arnab was previously a Scientific Officer at the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission. He is interested in the applications of Optical Coherence Tomography/Elastography for cancer detection.
Undergraduate Students
Ali-Rayhaan Soonasra
Undergraduate, BME
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Ali is an undergraduate pursuing a degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston. He is studying the applications of optical coherence and projection tomography through his work with graduate students in the lab. With his experience in the Biomedical Optics Lab, he intends on applying to graduate school in the field of biomedical engineering.