Author: Steven Graham Adie

Meg completed her B.S (Hons) in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at The University of Western Australia, Perth, advised by Dr Yu Suk Choi and Dr Robert White before moving to Melbourne to complete her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Monash University. Advised by Prof. Sharon Ricardo, Prof Mibel Aguilar and Dr Mark Del Borgo, she developed and characterized self-assembling beta-peptide hydrogels for the delivery of cell-based therapeutics for treatment of chronic kidney disease. Her current research as a Fulbright Scholar is focused on stem cell mechanosensation at a distance, where she will utilize optical coherence microscopy to track cellular responses to mechanical stimulation across large hydrogel volumes over time.

This new grant will support our collaborative research with the Xu Group on the development of multimodal hybrid adaptive optics.  We seek to utilize computational adaptive optics (CAO)-OCT as a deep-tissue aberration sensor, together with the close connection between hardware AO and CAO, to enable AO three-photon microscopy (AO-3PM) image faster and deeper  in the mouse and adult zebrafish brain (collaboration with the Fetcho Lab).  Additional details about the grant can be found on NIH eReporter:  Real-time Aberration Sensor for Large-Scale Microscopy Deep in the Mouse and Adult Zebrafish Brain.

The new grant will develop an acoustic radiation force (ARF)-OCE system based on tightly focused ultrasound ‘palpation’, and apply this system for longitudinal in vivo imaging of the mechanical properties of the tumor microenvironment during tumor development.  Further details about the grant can be found at NIH eReporter: Ultrahigh-Resolution Quantitative Optical Coherence Elastography of the Tumor Microenvironment In Vivo