Research

In 2020 I joined the Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering at Catholic University of Chile as Assistant Professor. We will need your help to advance the frontiers of imaging technology, and to seek and address new biomedical applications. We will leverage advanced light modulation, engineer new image forming methods, and invent statistical inference techniques to extract useful information from biological tissues. Please find further updates at my Lab website.

I was awarded the 2019 Deutsch Fellowship by the Optical Society of America, which funded my postdoctoral work in the Laboratory of Brett Bouma at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital. To advance non-invasive optical diagnostics, I developed a contrast mechanism for optical coherence tomography (OCT) based on anisotropic light scattering. To advance imaging through complex media, such as multimode fiber microendoscopy, I collaborated to study their light propagation matrix and its computation.

I obtained my PhD (2019) in Biophysics at Harvard and also graduated in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. I worked with Adam Cohen and other Lab members towards all-optical mapping of neuronal function. I developed experimental protocols for optogenetic neurophysiology, and invented a high-speed optical sectioning method for imaging neuronal activity in brain tissue. I applied these tools to make wide-area functional maps spanning cortex and striatum, of the effects of antiepileptic drugs on neural excitability and of the effects of AMPA and NMDA receptor blockers on functional connectivity in acute brain slices. Postoctoral work at the same Lab concentrated on advancing high-speed large-area selective access multiphoton excitation microscopy and its application to mapping dynamics of synaptic release and facilitation.

From 2011 to 2013, I worked at MIT as an M+Vision Fellow, where I developed two projects, each in close collaboration with a team of Fellows. In a project to reduce colorectal cancer mortality by increasing the sensitivity of colonoscopy to premalignant lesions, I invented a technology that uses a standard endoscope to calculate and display 3D morphology of the colon mucosa to highlight lesions, then I built a prototype and tested it in a human clinical trial. To improve molecular characterization in oncology, I invented a method for multiplexed PET imaging, and applied it to simultaneously measure the biodistribution of two radiotracers using preclinical scanners. These projects were pursued in collaboration with clinicians and researchers in multiple institutions in Boston and Madrid. A description of each project can be found here: M+PET, Colonoscopy

In 2009, I completed my MS thesis, working at the Biomedical Imaging Center, Catholic University of Chile supervised by Pablo Irarrázaval. My work towards enabling cheaper MRI scanners led to a theoretical framework based on the Fractional Fourier Transform to understand and reconstruct MRI signals generated in a quadratic magnetic field. After graduating, I continued work there as a Research Assistant and Adjunct Professor at the Engineering School until 2011.