Tandon Faculty First Look 2022 Scholars

How did you become interested in STEM topics?

I had a wonderful role model, because my mother is a science teacher back in Sri Lanka.

Describe your academic journey and research up until now.

I earned my undergraduate degree in electrical and electronics engineering at the University of Peradeniya, which is considered to be the top institution of higher learning in Sri Lanka. When it was time to consider graduate school, however, I wanted to study in the U.S., and my professors agreed that I would gain a lot from the experience.

I’m now at the State University of New York, in Albany, earning my Ph.D. and working on new ways to detect radio frequency interference. People think right away about cell phone reception, but it goes well beyond that. If the satellites gathering weather data experience interference, for example, that can affect the study of climate change and even industries like agriculture, which depends on that data for crop planting schedules.

How do you feel about participating in the Faculty First Look program?

I think of the experience as a much needed and appreciated guidebook. I’ve never received such personalized advice before. The next year is going to be crucial for me, and knowing where I need to improve and the areas I should be focused on is invaluable. 

What are your ultimate goals?

In order to grow professionally, I’ll need to stay in the U.S. Sri Lanka has wonderful universities, and I was privileged to serve as a lecturer at the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, but there are few opportunities to conduct in-depth research there.  

How did you become interested in STEM topics?

My aunt ran a phlebotomy lab, and visiting her as a child was a fascinating experience. That inspired my interest in science and medicine.

Describe your academic journey and research up until now.

I’m a native of Lexington, Massachusetts, and I had been interested in attending Tufts, which has a beautiful campus right near there. I majored in Biology and minored in Physics, and was fortunate to have the opportunity to do research at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, developing new types of microscopes in the Tearney Lab. I graduated in 2016, with an undergraduate thesis titled, “Live Cell Phase Imaging under Whole Blood Shear Flow Using Oblique Back-Illumination.” 

At Mass General, I had discovered how much I like to build things, so Biomedical Engineering seemed like a logical step. In 2021 I earned a doctoral degree in that discipline from Columbia University, and my advisor was Professor Christine Hendon. My lab was in the Department of Electrical Engineering, and I was exposed to immense knowledge and excellent classes that helped propel my research and academic training. I think there’s a lot of benefit from immersing yourself in different departments and expanding your boundaries. 

My Ph.D. is the best thing that has happened to me so far in my life — I grew and accomplished a lot during those years. I designed and built an ultrahigh-speed optical coherence tomography (UHS-OCT) system on a medical device cart for breast cancer imaging applications — developing fully customized and easy-to-use software, hardware, and computer-controlled optics — and I subsequently conducted a clinical study with 100 patients. I also developed custom convolutional neural network (CNN) algorithms to classify disease in OCT images, and I hope that contributes to the speed at which biopsies can be evaluated because the waiting time for results is always nerve-wracking for patients. 

Additionally, I collaborated with the Lipson Nanophotonics Group to integrate a millimeter-scale silicon nitride chip-based supercontinuum light source with OCT, with the goal of miniaturizing imaging systems significantly. That research led to me being the first author on a paper published in Science Advances. I recently started as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering working with Professor Juejun (JJ) Hu, and I’m very excited to see what I can accomplish there. 

How do you feel about participating in the Faculty First Look program?

The whole thing was amazing. As I sat at the Welcome Dinner on the first night, I looked to the left and right of me, and on each side was a professor happy to get to know me and to give personalized advice based on their own extensive experience. I particularly welcomed the chance to give my faculty job presentation the next day; that type of practice is invaluable. 

What are your ultimate goals?

My dream is to continue to develop new medical diagnostic tools and contribute to better patient outcomes.

How did you become interested in STEM topics?

It seems to run in the family; my mother is a doctor, and my father is a respiratory therapist. The decision to pursue research that would have important clinical applications was cemented for me during my freshman year at Princeton, when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She passed away during my senior year.

Describe your academic journey and research up until now.

"At Princeton, I majored in Chemical and Biological Engineering, and I earned my bachelor’s degree in 2020. I came to NYU Tandon for my doctoral studies because I wanted to work with Nathalie Pinkerton, whose research group is developing responsive soft materials for drug delivery applications. I’m working with nanoparticles that release therapeutic drugs into the body only where and when they are needed. To explain in simple terms, when you have a headache and you take a drug like acetaminophen, it goes where it needs to go to treat the pain in your head, but it also circulates everywhere else in your body. That’s not a big deal in that case, but when you’re treating a disease like cancer, the drugs required to kill cancer cells are toxic to other cells too, so you really don’t want them harming healthy cells. Targeted drug delivery is safer and more efficient."

How do you feel about participating in the Faculty First Look program?

I learned so much, but one of my major takeaways is that when presenting yourself in person or in writing, it’s not enough to simply describe your research and list your accomplishments. You have to also convey your values and explain why your work is so important to you. 

What are your ultimate goals?

I plan to stay in academia, continue to conduct research aimed at benefiting the world, and, hopefully, have the opportunity to mentor others with similar goals.

How did you become interested in STEM topics?

When we were small, my brother and I spent a lot of time reverse-engineering the remote controls, radios, and other electronics in our house. You could say we were partners in crime! He is also in a STEM field now, so we sometimes joke that we have each other to blame.

Describe your academic journey and research up until now.

In India, I scored in the top 1 percent of the college entrance exams, so I was admitted to the Indian Institute of Technology, in Roorkee, which is a very good school. Many people in India consider careers in engineering, so getting into a top school is very competitive. I am a competitive person, so I didn’t mind that. At Roorkee, I ran 400- and 800-meter races, and I ended up becoming the captain of the school’s track and field team and heading a league in which the IITs compete — similar in a way to the NCAA in America.

After graduating, many of my classmates headed to consultancies or the financial industry, but I wanted to stick with engineering. I got a job as a failure analyst at a tech firm, which stationed me in Malaysia, but I knew if I wanted to advance I better consider graduate school.

I was specifically interested in hardware electronics for space exploration applications, and Caltech in Pasadena has a long history of accomplishment in that area, so in 2012 I came to the U.S. and earned my master’s degree there. While at Caltech, I also worked with JPL briefly, and that was a dream come true! My experience as an engineer with the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, under the European Space Agency (ESA), introduced me to a whole new field of analog design. I joined Professor Bhargava’s research group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for pursuing my Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering to develop next-generation IR imaging instruments. Using my expertise in spectroscopic imaging for remote sensing applications I now seek to develop novel cancer imaging technology.

How do you feel about participating in the Faculty First Look program?

I have taken part in a lot of career development programs but Faculty First Look was truly unique. It wasn’t just someone standing in front of the room giving one-size-fits-all advice. The Tandon faculty members really made an attempt to get to know us and tailor their recommendations to our strengths and goals. I felt particularly gratified to get the chance to know Professor Elisa Riedo, because she worked in industry before joining academia. And I could relate to that path. It's truly inspiring and encouraging to connect with a woman professor in STEM, who is also an inventor developing innovative technology.

What are your ultimate goals?

I enjoyed working in industry but I love teaching and interacting with students, so I do want to remain in academia. I would like to give students the benefit of my experience and help guide them the way my mentors have done for me. Besides that, it’s fun to get people excited about learning and doing hands-on labs, and who doesn’t want a fun job?