PERSONNEL 2018-07-09T19:29:25+00:00

Personnel

Principal Investigator

J. Quincy Brown, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
Dept. of Biomedical Engineering
Program Member, Tulane Cancer Center
jqbrown@tulane.edu

B.S. Biomedical Engineering, Louisiana Tech University, 2001
Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering, Louisiana Tech University, 2005
Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, 2005-2009

Graduate Students

Kate Elfer

Kate is a Ph.D. candidate who received her undergraduate degree in Nanosystems Engineering from Louisiana Tech University in May, 2012. She is also a graduate of the National Academy of Engineers Grand Challenges Scholar Program and a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Kate’s research focus is on the development of new strategies for fluorescence histology for ex vivo microscopy, and assessment of their compatibility with standard downstream processing.

Bihe “Ellie” Hu

Ellie received her BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, where she focused on trans-genetic mouse brain embedding with resin and high-throughput brain imaging using various fluorescent microscopes. Currently as a Ph.D. student at Tulane, her research interest is to optimize inverted Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (iSPIM) using electronic confocal slit detection (eCSD) and structured illumination (SI) for 3D imaging of large samples, such as prostate cancer biospecimens, breast tumors, nerves-on-a-chip, cultured vascular networks, and so on. She also combines iSPIM with optical clearing methods, such as TDE clearing and CLARITY, for thick tissue imaging.

Zhuge Huimin

Huimin graduated from Southern University of Science and Technology of China (SUSTech) in July 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering with experience in speech signal processing, EEG brain-computer interface and wearable medical device prototype design. Huimin joined Dr. Brown’s Translational Biophotonics Lab in Sept 2017 and is currently in her first year at Tulane. With a possible future career in industry, Huimin is interested in 2D/3D image processing and computational modeling.

Pete Lawson

Pete received his B.S. in Biology and Computer Science from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His undergraduate research focused on ensembling machine learning approaches for the enhancement of phenotype prediction in maize. As an NSF IGERT Ph.D. fellow in Bioinnovation, he joined the Translational Biophotonics Laboratory in 2015 to continue work at the intersection of biology and computer science.  His current research involves applying topological data analysis to gain insights into topological differences in cancer morphology at the histological level and their importance in diagnosis and prognosis.

David Tulman

David received a B.S. from The Ohio State University in 2010. Prior to arrival at Tulane University, he gained extensive experience as a clinical trials coordinator for both investigational drug and device studies. He has previously worked at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and The New Orleans BioInnovation Center. David is a PhD Fellow in the Bioinnovation Program at Tulane University, focusing his research on the clinical validation of fluorescence microscopy for applications including point-of-procedure margin and biopsy evaluation for cancer.

Mei Wang

Mei received her BS and MS from Tulane University in Biomedical Engineering. After graduation in 2013, she joined the TBL lab as a Ph.D. Candidate. Mei’s research has focused on the development and validation of video-rate structured illumination microscopy for rapid imaging of large intact specimens at the point of care, including cancer biopsies and whole tumor resection margin surfaces (prostate and kidney).

Sam Luethy

Sam Luethy is a 4+1 Master’s student with interests in rapid prototyping in the research and clinical setting with a focus on computer aided design (CAD), mechanical engineering, and electronics. He exercises this concentration through his work where he has applied his knowledge of CAD and prototyping to solve many issues encountered during research from building custom tissue sample holders to designing an electro-mechanical sample positioners to increase tissue surface area coverage and reproducibility of whole-tissue microscopy. Sam is also a member of the Tulane club water polo team and is actively involved in graduate student government.

Undergraduate Students

Carly Askinas

Carly Askinas is a senior in biomedical engineering.  Her research is in the clinical applications of structured illumination microscopy.

Ann Marie Barfield

Ann Marie is a junior from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and is interested in clinical applications of Structured Illumination Microscopy. She is currently pursuing a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering.

Daniel Bolus

Daniel is a senior from Birmingham, AL in pursuit of his bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. He is currently working to further develop the selective plane illumination microscope for bio-imaging. He plans on getting a Master’s in product design in hopes to pursue a career in innovation and product development.

Max Cooper

Bio coming soon….

Isadora Decker-Lucke

Isadora Decker-Lucke is a senior Biomedical Engineering major who studies new stains for fluorescence histology.

Lizzie Hornick

Lizzie is a third-year biomedical engineering student from Maryland with research interests in bioinstrumentation and medical imaging design. She plans to pursue a graduate degree in biomedical engineering.

Siyang Hu

Siyang is in her junior year pursuing bachelor’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science. Her current research interest is comparison of different Structured Illumination Microscopy image reconstruction algorithms. Outside the lab, she enjoys fencing and playing paintball. She is multilingual and has been honored as a Cowen Scholar.

Lauren Hymel

Lauren Hymel is from Cypress, Texas and is currently a senior undergraduate at Tulane seeking a B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in math. Her research (in collaboration with the Mostany lab) is focused on the development and validation of a wireless closed-loop head-mounted optogenetics stimulator in mouse models to further understand normal vs pathological brain functions. Upon graduation, she hopes to continue her studies and attend graduate school to obtain a higher degree in Biomedical Engineering.

Daniel Mena-Carroll

Daniel Mena is a junior pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. His current research interest is in image processing for Structured Illumination Microscopy. He hopes to continue his education after graduation and pursue a higher degree in Biomedical Engineering.

Carly Swan

Carly is a senior Biomedical Engineering student from Columbia, South Carolina. She studies how SPIM imaging can be useful for breast cancer applications.  On campus, she is currently serving as a Teaching Assistant in the Center for Anatomical and Movement Sciences, and as an Executive Board member of Tulane’s Chi Omega Fraternity chapter.

Collaborators

Jonathan Epstein, M.D., Pathology, Johns-Hopkins School of Medicine

Brittany Fasy, Ph.D., Computer Science, Montana State University

Sharon Fox, M.D., Ph.D., Pathology, New Orleans VA Hospital

Stephen Freedland, M.D., Urology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Michelle Lacey, Ph.D., Mathematics, Tulane University

Benjamin Lee, M.D., Urology, University of Arizona School of Medicine

Ricardo Mostany, Ph.D., Pharmacology, Tulane University School of Medicine

Jonathan Silberstein, M.D., Urology, Tulane University School of Medicine

Andrew Sholl, M.D., Pathology, Tulane University School of Medicine

Brian Summa, Ph.D., Computer Science, Tulane University

Carola Wenk, Ph.D., Computer Science, Tulane Universit

Lab Alumni

Tyler Schlichenmeyer (2012 – 2014)

Mark Tortorich (2014 – 2015)

Chelsea Vaughn (2014 – 2015)

Christopher Miller (2015 – 2016)

Sydney Chestler (2014 – 2017)

Zach Murdock (2014 – 2017)

Allison Wegner (2016 – 2017)