Nimmi Ramanujam
Professor
Prof. Ramanujam's group is innovating on optical strategies to peer into the biological landscape of thick tissues. Technologies being developed in her lab leverage principles of optical spectroscopy, optical sectioning microscopy, and molecular imaging. Her research group is developing and applying these optically based tools for three problems in cancer: cancer screening in resource-limited settings, intra-operative margin assessment to detect residual disease during cancer surgery and visualizing tumor hypoxia and metabolism in the context of cancer therapy and drug discovery. Prof. Ramanujam is leading a multi-disciplinary effort to translate these technologies to clinical applications in the breast, cervix and head and neck cancers. In addition to her academic efforts, Prof. Ramanujam has spun out a company, Zenalux to commercialize several of the technologies developed in her lab.
Prof. Ramanujam has received several awards for her work in cancer research and technology development. She received the TR100 Young Innovator Award from MIT in 2003, a $2.5M DOD Era of Hope Scholar award in 2004, the Global Indus Technovator award from MIT in 2005 and a $3M Era of Hope Research Scholar award in 2009. Dr. Ramanujam was recently elected as fellow of OSA and she has been invited to be a member of the DOD’s breast cancer research program (BCRP) integration panel (IP) that sets the vision of the BCRP program and plans the dissemination of over $100 M of funds for breast cancer research annually. She is co-editor for the latest edition of the Handbook of Biomedical Optics (publisher Taylor and Francis). In 2011, she received the Stansell Family Distinguished Research Award from the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University.
Dr. Ramanujam earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin in 1995 and then trained as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania from 1996-2000. Prior to her tenure at Duke, she was an assistant professor in the Dept. Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 2000-2005.
Contact Information:
- Office Location: 2575 FCIEMAS
- Office Phone: (919) 660-5307
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Email Address:
- Web Page:
Education:
| PhD | University of Texas, Austin | 1995 |
Curriculum Vitae
Specialties:
Medical Imaging
Photonics
Cancer diagnostics and therapy
Medical Instrumentation
Medical Diagnostics
Awards, Honors, and Distinctions:
- Chair Elect, CDMRP Integration Panel for the BCRP program, 2013
- Fellow, Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, 2013
- Member, NIH BMIT-A Study section, July, 2012- present
- SPIE Fellow, February, 2012
- Conference organizing committee member, OSA BIOMED, 2012
- Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), 2012
- Member, BME External Advisory Board, University of Texas, Austin, 2012
- Member, CDMRP Integration panel for the BCRP program, 2012
- AIMBE Fellow, December, 2011
- Advisory Board Member, Dept. Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas, Austin, 2011 - 2014
- Profiled in SPIE Women in Optics, 2011, 2011
- Stansell Distinguished Research Award, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University, 2011
- Fellow, Optical Society of America, 2009
- Standing Member, DOD Breast Cancer Research Program Integration Panel, 2009
- Invited Speaker, Gordon Conference on Lasers in Medicine and Biology, December, 2008
- Plenary Speaker, DOE Era of Hope Breast Cancer Conference, December, 2008
- Global Indus Technovators Awards, Indian Business Club at MIT, 2005
- Technology achievement award, MIT Alumni Association of Wisconsin, 2005
- Vilas Associate award, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2005
- Era of Hope Scholar Award, DOD Breast Cancer Research Program, 2004
- Invited speaker, Gordon Conference on Lasers in Medicine and Biology, 2004
- TR100 Young Innovator Award, Selected as one of the top 100 young innovators in technology in the world by MIT's Technology Review Magazine, 2003
- Whitaker travel award to participate in the ASEE Conference, 2002
- Fellow, American Society of Laser Medicine and Surgery, December, 2001
- Whitaker Foundation investigator, 2001
- Invited participant in NSF’s “Engineering Education Scholars Workshop”, 1996
- National Research Service Award, National Institutes of Health, 1996
- One of three finalists in the American Association for Medical Instrumentation Young Investigator Competition, 1996
- Scholarship, Association for Women in Science Educational Foundation, November, 1995
- Award for Best Scientific Paper, American Association of Cancer Research, 1995
- Scholarship, American Society for Laser Medicine & Surgery, 1995
- Scholarship, International Society for Optical Engineering, November, 1994
- Professional Development Award, University of Texas, Austin, 1994 - 1995
- Award for Best Scientific Paper, American Society for Laser Medicine & Surgery, 1994-95
Selected Patents:
- Optical Assay System for Intra Operative Assessment of Tumor Margins
- Methods, Systems and Computer Program Products for Optimization of Probes for Spectroscopic Measurement in Turbid Media, 7835786
- Monte carlo based model of fluorescence in turbid media and methods and systems for using same to determine intrinsic fluorescence of turbid media, 7818154
- Optical Assay System for Intra Operative Assessment of Tumor Margins, 7751039
- Method for extraction of optical properties from diffuse reflectance spectra, 7,570,988 B2
- Depth-resolved reflectance instrument and method for its use, 7440659
- Method for probabilistically classifying tissue in vitro and in vivo using fluorescence spectroscopy, 7236815
- Depth-resolved fluorescence instrument with angled excitation, 7202947
- Depth-resolved fluorescence instrument, 6825928
- Diagnostic method and apparatus for cervical squamous intraepithelial lesions in vitro and in vivo using fluorescence spectroscopy, 7202947
- Spectroscopic detection of cervical pre-cancer using radial basis function networks, 6135965
- Spectroscopic method and apparatus for optically detecting abnormal mammalian epithelial tissue, 6095982
- Near-infrared raman spectroscopy for in vitro and in vivo detection of cervical precancers, 5991653
- Optical method and apparatus for the diagnosis of cervical precancers using raman and fluorescence spectroscopies, 5697373
- Diagnosis of dysplasia using laser induced fluorescence, 5623932
- Diagnosis of dysplasia using laser induced fluorescence, 5421339
- Depth-resolved fluorescence instrument
- Method and apparatus for probabilistically classifying tissue in vitro and in vivo using fluorescence spectroscopy
- Depth-resolved fluorescence instrument with angled excitation
- Side-firing probe for performing optical spectroscopy during core needle
- Method for extraction of optical properties from diffuse reflectance spectra
- Methods, systems, and computer program products for optimization of probes for spectroscopic measurement in turbid media
- Depth-resolved reflectance instrument and method for its use
- Monte Carlo based model of fluorescence in turbid media and methods and systems for using same to determine intrinsic fluorescence of turbid media
- Optical assay system for intraoperative assessment of tumor margins
- Scaling method for fast monte carlo simulation of diffuse reflectance spectra from multi-layered turbid media and methods and systems for using same to determine optical properties of multi-layered turbid medium from measured diffuse reflectance
- Systems and methods for spectral analysis of a tissue mass using an instrument, an optical probe, and a monte carlo or a diffusion algorithm
- Optical assay system with a multi-probe imaging array
- Integrated miniaturized fiber optic probe
- Optical assay system for intraoperative assessment of tumor margins
Courses Taught:
- BME 551L.001 - BME OPT SPECT TISSUE OPTICS
- BME 551L.01L - BME OPT SPECT TISSUE OPTICS
Representative Publications: (More Publications)
- Chang VTC, Cartwright PS, Bean SM, Palmer GM, Bentley RC, Ramanujam N., Quantitative physiology of the precancerous cervix in vivo via optical spectroscopy, Neoplasia, vol 11 no. 4 (2009), pp. 325-332.
- J. Q. Brown and L. G. Wilke and J. Geradts and S. A. Kennedy and G. M. Palmer and N. Ramanujam, Quantitative Optical Spectroscopy: A Robust Tool for Direct Measurement of Breast Cancer Vascular Oxygenation and Total Hemoglobin Content In vivo, Cancer Research, vol 69 no. 7 (2009), pp. 2919 -- 2926 [abs].
- K. Vishwanath and D. Klein and K. Chang and T. Schroeder and M. W. Dewhirst and N. Ramanujam, Quantitative optical spectroscopy can identify long-term local tumor control in irradiated murine head and neck xenografts, Journal Of Biomedical Optics, vol 14 no. 5 (2009) [abs].
- L. G. Wilke and J. Q. Brown and T. M. Bydlon and S. A. Kennedy and L. M. Richards and M. K. Junker and J. Gallagher and W. T. Barry and J. Geradts and N. Ramanujam, Rapid noninvasive optical imaging of tissue composition in breast tumor margins, American Journal Of Surgery, vol 198 no. 4 (2009), pp. 566 -- 574 [abs].
- J.H. Ostrander, C.M. McMahon, S. Lem, S.R. Millon, V.L. Seewaldt, N. Ramanujam, The Optical Redox Ratio Differentiates Breast Cancer Cell Lines Based on Receptor Status, Cancer Research, vol 70 no. 11 (2010), pp. 4759-4766.
- Millon SR, Ostrander JH, Brown JQ, Rajeha AM, Seewaldt VL, Ramanujam N, Uptake of 2-NBDG as a method to monitor therapy response in breast cancer cell lines, Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, vol 126 no. 1 (2011), pp. 55-62.