Brillouin light scattering is a well-known optical phenomenon that was discovered in 1922.  Historically, Brillouin scattering has been used for material characterization and remote sensing. However, conventional Brillouin spectroscopy requires long acquisition time and has low spatial resolution. About 15 years ago, thanks to the technology breakthrough, a new modality named confocal Brillouin microscope that is 100 times faster and has diffraction-limit resolution was first demonstrated. This new Brillouin technique brings about vast research opportunities in understanding the biophysical and biomechanical properties of live cell and tissue. In this presentation, I will first talk about the development of several new Brillouin techniques. I will then demonstrate their applications in biomedical research, with a focus on cancer metastasis and embryo development. 

Short Bio 

Jitao is an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University. Before that, he was a research assistant professor in Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also received his postdoc training from 2015 to 2018. He briefly worked at the University of Arizona from 2012 to 2014 as postdoc. He obtained the Ph.D. degree in optical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing China. He has authored more than 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited two book chapters. Jitao has been a recipient of several awards, including the Doctoral Dissertation Excellence Award, the Excellent Youth of China Instrument Society scholarship, the Marcy Speer Award for postdoc, the NIH K25 award, and the Helmsley Scholar from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He has 3 US patents granted on Brillouin technique.