Sanidh Shah, an undergraduate honors biochemistry student and a student researcher in Cullen Endowed Chair and Professor of Biomedical Engineering Kirill Larin’s Biomedical Optics Lab (BOL), was selected to participate in the Fraunhofer Photonica Summer School hosted by the Fraunhofer Group for Light & Surfaces in Germany this past September 22 – 27.
The immersive, hands-on program offers students from around the world the opportunity to explore cutting-edge photonics and optical imaging technologies. During the Summer School, young scientists visited different Fraunhofer institutes across Germany, including Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Ettlingen and Aachen. At each site, they took part in a topical scientific program with hands-on practical elements that provide insight into and different perspectives on photonics.
“Sanidh’s selection reflects his strong research foundation and growing interest in global innovation. His work in the lab and commitment to learning continue to distinguish him as a rising talent in biomedical engineering,” said Biomedical Engineering Program Director Tina Kazemi.
Shah joined Larin’s lab in the spring of his freshman year, interested in medical imaging and drawn to the work Larin’s team was doing. Recently, he has worked on the visualization of embryonic morphology in mice.
“OCT works by using a gentle laser light and a technique called interferometry, which compares tiny differences in reflected light, to capture fine structural details. By repeating these measurements across the embryo, we can stitch them into a high-resolution 3D map of the whole body – or specific parts like the arm or the head – and use that to measure and quantify the individual features of a specific embryo,” Shah explained.
“In the grand scheme of things, these measurements allow us to administer a tightly controlled dose of a drug to a pregnant mother mouse and then understand and visualize what that does to the development of the embryo, including its size and shape.”
“It’s about giving researchers a clearer, more noninvasive way to see how substances affect developing tissues,” he continued. “In the past, studying these changes often meant dissecting the embryo to look for structural differences. With OCT, these invasive steps are reduced– we can use lasers to create detailed, 3D images through a small surgical window, or simply by imaging the embryos in an ex vivo environment, like I did.
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is Europe’s largest applied research and development company and partners with both public governmental and private commercial institutes, putting them on the forefront of new optical technological developments. Shah and his cohort of approximately 20 other students from other countries around the world had exclusive opportunities to view and learn about emerging technologies not yet patented or debuted publicly, as well as the opportunity to share some of his work in discussion with leading European scientists and researchers.
“Because of that collaborative spirit at Fraunhofer, I had these amazing experiences to view these leading optical innovations and how they relate to the next generation of biomedical techniques,” said Shah. “We were actually invited down into the research labs and going through and learning the fundamental processes at play.”
“I’m very thankful, because without Dr. Larin having told me about this opportunity, I wouldn’t have ever even known. I’m a pre-medical student, and my hope is to apply next cycle to medical school. It’s really inspiring that, in addition to my ambitions on the clinical side, I’m here as an undergraduate having these amazing opportunities to see how this translational research can be used in medicine,” he said.