Badri Roysam recognized for his groundbreaking research
Badri Roysam, professor and department chairman of electrical and computer engineering at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, was recently elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering’s (AIMBE) College of Fellows.
Fellows are nominated each year by their peers and represent the top 2 percent of the medical and biological engineering community.
“This is a great honor,” he said. “It puts me in the company of brilliant minds, whom I hope to interact with and work together to inform the larger community about medical and biological engineering innovations and advances.”
Renowned in the field of multi-dimensional image informatics, Roysam was awarded the honor for his contributions to automated biological image analysis algorithms that have led to products and discoveries in cell biology, neuroscience, and immunology.
His research occurs at the confluence of multi-dimensional signal processing, machine learning, big-data bioinformatics, high-performance computing and biomedicine.
Innovative breakthroughs in his work enabled the first quantitative profiling of the neurovascular stem-cell niche; the first computational stem-cell lineage reconstruction; and computational prediction of retinal stem-cell fate with greater than 98 percent accuracy. They also led to several discoveries, including uncovering a previously unknown hyperfused mitochondrial state; identifying a signaling mechanism driving stem cell migration; pinpointing proteins underlying thymocyte movements; quantifying immediate early gene expression stimulated by cognitive stimuli; and distinguishing immune cell movement behaviors that predict tumor killing efficacy.
Roysam has pioneered automatic 3-D mapping of the complex arbors of neurons, glia and microvascular networks of the brain, and multi-cellular perivascular structures – especially stem-cell niches. He developed the first method for curved retinal image registration for detecting changes in diabetic retinopathy. His methods have been applied to stem cell biology, gene expression in learning and memory, reproductive biology, transplant pathology, neuroprosthetic devices, cellular alterations due to alcohol and exercise, axonal transport in Huntington’s disease, pancreatic, kidney and breast cancer histology, developmental immunology, angiogenesis, cervical cancer, retinal diseases, mitochondrial biology, toxicology assay automation, worm biology, cancer immunotherapy and concussion.
His current research focuses on two areas: drug discovery for concussions in collaboration with John Redell and Pramod Dash at UT Health and Dragan Maric at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes (NINDS); and cell based immunotherapy for cancer in collaboration with Navin Varadarajan, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Cullen College.
Roysam has published more than 130 papers in prestigious scientific journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Nature Methods, Nature Protocols, Cell, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Immunology, Bioinformatics, and IEEE Transactions.
Despite all his achievements, Roysam said working with students is the most rewarding aspect of his career. “They invariably surprise me with great new ideas,” he said.
He earned his Ph.D. and master’s degree in electrical engineering from Washington University, and earned a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology.
Roysam will be inducted at the AIMBE Annual Meeting in March 2019 at the National Academy of Sciences.
AIMBE is a non-profit, honorific society of the most accomplished individuals in the medical and biological engineering fields. Its mission is to advocate for biomedical engineering innovation through public policy initiatives.