I currently work in the Rice Computational Imaging Group. My advisor is Prof. Ashok Veeraraghavan. My current project is to develop novel minimally-invasive brain imaging systems using diffuse optical tomography (DOT). I am also developing accelerated simulations of photon propagation through turbid media, such as biological tissue.
I worked in the Image Science Lab under the supervision of Prof. Aswin Sankaranarayan. My project extended research that has already been done in developing a 2-dimensional camera. More specifically, I worked on techniques for building a spherical imager. The attached figure displays a simplified model of the pinhole (a), lens-based (b), and mask-based (c) cameras. (The image is adapted from Asif et al. and Nayar [1] [2])
[1] Asif M. S., Ayremlou A., Sankaranarayanan A., Veeraraghavan A., Baraniuk R. FlatCam: Thin, Lensless Cameras Using Coded Aperture and Computation. IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 384-397, 2017.
[2] Nayar, Shree. "Computational Imaging." The 1st Winter School in Computer Science and Engineering: On Computer Vision, 8 Jan - 12 Jan 2017, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Edmond J. Safra Campus. Lecture.
I worked with Dr. Nisha Shukla in studying the applications of Tetrahexahedral (THH) Gold Nanoparticles in chiral sensing and chiral separation. Chiral separation is critical for drug purification. Metal surfaces with high miller indices have shown promise in such applications. My project was to study whether gold nanoparticles with high miller indices could produce similar results. I was the first student in the lab to successfully synthesize THH nanoparticles with high miller indices. My responsibilities included synthesis of THH nanoparticles, characterization of synthesized nanoparticles, performing optical rotation measurements to study chiral separation, and researching the literature to develop my experimental setup. For this project I was awarded a SURF grant.
I was a student in the Garcia Summer Research Program. My project was to develop novel bactericidal surfaces. These materials utilized graphene and phase separated polymer blends. The theory was that nano-scale protrusions could be used to puncture the bacterial membrane. This research was largely based on work previously done by Pogodin et. al. and Tu et. al. For the results of this research and subsequent research paper submission, my group was awarded a Siements Science Competition semifinalist placement (2013). This research was led by Distinguished Prof. Miriam Rafailovich and Prof. John Jerome.
Image credit: NIAID under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
I worked under the supervision of Prof Swastik Kar, analyzing the gas sensing properties of graphene. Specifically, I tested how the presence of certain vapors (such as acetone) affects the conductivity of graphene films. For my contributions in the lab, I was listed as a co-author in this paper.
Image credit: AlexanderAlUS for Wikipedia, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
I was a student in Northeastern University's Young Scholars Program (YSP). I worked under the supervision of Prof. Erin Cram. I studied the effects of gene expression in the development of C. elegans, specifically the migration of the distal tip cells. Gene expression was altered using the effects of RNAi to competitively inhibit the expression of pre-selected genes.
Image credit: Bob Goldstein, UNC Chapel Hill, obtained from Wikipedia under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.