Name:

Dr. Tonmoy Chakraborty

Title:

Assistant Professor

Department:

Physics and Astronomy

Describe your research in about 200 words.

Tissues are composed of multiple cell types organized in a complex three-dimensional architecture. However, because of the limited penetration depth of visible photons, observing the molecular and structural composition of intact tissues remains challenging. This severely limits studies involving cancer-related signaling pathways and cellular dynamics. My research encompasses the development of new microscopes that can alleviate some of these problems by extending the spatiotemporal resolution and takes a multidisciplinary approach towards it. My laboratory specializes in developing light-sheet based fluorescence imaging tools that can harness information from a wide variety of physiologically relevant samples. This work has enabled several studies involved in pediatric cancer that warrants the development of xenograft models of these diseases in zebrafish and mouse and image cancer cells in the in vivo environment. I am also interested to develop intravital imaging modalities for specifically mouse xenografts, and presently carrying out research that combines two-photon scanning microscopy with adaptive optics to correct for aberrations and to suppress scattering.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

perseverance