Principal Investigator
Virginijus Barzda
Prof. Barzda is a Professor at the Departments of Physics, and Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto. His research includes the development of novel imaging modalities for nonlinear optical microscopy. He developed a wide range of microscopy techniques that employ second-harmonic generation (SHG), third-harmonic generation (THG) and multiphoton excitation fluorescence image contrast for non-invasive label-free imaging of biological structures, live cells, and subcellular organelles. He focuses on the ultrastructural characterization of biological tissues with nonlinear polarimetric microscopy methods. The ultrastructural imaging is applied to study the organization of collagen in cancer tissue and to investigate contractility mechanisms in cardiac and skeletal muscles. In addition, he develops novel labels for nonlinear microscopy and studies photosynthetic structures.
Group Members
Serguei Kroulglov
Research Associate
Serguei obtained his Ph.D. from the Institute of Physics Academy of Sciences of Belarus (Minsk), where he worked as a Research Associate for ten years. He was a visiting Professor for Quantum Field Theory at Nankai University (China) and Professor at Belarus University (Minsk) before moving to Toronto as a researcher and teacher at International Educational Centre Toronto. He joined the University of Toronto as a sessional lecturer and since 2014 he has been a Research Associate working with Prof. Barzda.
Ahmad Golaraei
Post-doctoral Fellow
Ahmad obtained his BSc and MSc in Physics from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) in Iran. He joined Barzda lab in 2012 as a Ph.D. student. The focus of his Ph.D. work was studying the structural properties of collagen in biological tissues using polarization-resolved second-harmonic generation microscopy. He used collagen structural properties to differentiate between normal and cancerous human tissues. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in our lab as well as in Prof. Brian Wilson's group at Princess Margaret Cancer Research Centre where he is developing a stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscope.
Kamdin Mirsanaye
Ph.D. Candidate
Kamdin obtained his Honours BSc in Mathematical Physics at Simon Fraser University, in British Columbia (2016). He joined Barzda lab as an MSc student and studied the ultrastructural properties of collagen in the conductive system of the heart using polarimetric second-harmonic generation microscopy (2017). As a Ph.D. candidate, Kamdin is developing a Spectral-resolved polarimetric nonlinear microscopy technique to investigate fundamental properties of nonlinear light-matter interactions. He is also involved with the construction of a wide-field microscope for fast, and high-resolution imaging.
Leonardo Uribe
Ph.D. Candidate