Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellows are selected for terms of up to three years. Postdoctoral Fellows that are currently working at the Beckman Institute are listed below. View Alumni
Suma Bhat Suma
Bhat earned a Ph.D. in 2010 from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research is in the area of human-computer intelligent interaction, with a primary focus on natural language and speech processing. Her research plans as a Beckman Fellow are to use multiple elements of communication, such as speech and gesture, for improving virtual reality applications like video conferencing. Suma's goal is to precisely characterize the efficacy of a new an online presentation tool, and then to design tools for improved human-to-human interactions in a virtual setting. She will work with several Beckman researchers, including Art Kramer, Minh Do, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, and Tom Huang from the Human-Computer Intelligent Interaction research theme, and Jennifer Cole and Kara Federmeier from the Biological Intelligence research theme.
Bradley Deutsch
Bradley earned a Ph.D. in Optics in 2011 at the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics. His research involved nanoscale optics, with a Ph.D. emphasis on phase-shifting interferometric methods for near-field optical microscopy and nanoparticle detection. At Beckman he will work with Scott Carney and Rohit Bhargava of the Bioimaging Science and Technology group. Bradley's project as a Beckman Fellow will focus on developing an ultramicroscopy technique that encodes spatial information in the spectral domain for improved temporal resolution without a loss of spatial resolution, for use in biology, medicine, and imaging applications.
Sarah Erickson
After earning a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Florida International University in 2011, Sarah Erickson became a postdoctoral researcher in the university's Optical Imaging Laboratory. Her research interests are in developing diffuse and fluorescence-enhanced optical imaging methods, with a clinical goal of early-stage breast cancer diagnosis. Sarah has used diffuse optical tomography (DOT) toward development of a hand-held based optical imager; as a Fellow she will explore applying optical coherence tomography (OCT) and vibrational imaging toward breast cancer diagnosis and intraoperative tumor margin detection in a clinical setting, and for insight into the biochemical changes of malignant tissue for disease prognosis. Sarah will work with Integrative Imaging research theme Co-chair Stephen Boppart, and collaborate with Rohit Bhargava from the Bioimaging Science and Technology group, and Martin Gruebele from the Nanoelectronics and Nanomaterials group.
Heather Lucas
Heather Lucas is scheduled to complete her Ph.D. in Psychology at Northwestern University in the summer of 2012. Her research focus is on the neural bases of human memory systems and changes they undergo during the aging process. At Beckman she will work with Cognitive Neuroscience group members Neal Cohen and Kara Federmeier, and with the Center for Nutrition, Learning, and Memory that Cohen directs. Her research aims as a Fellow include identifying early markers of pathological memory decline with age and characterizing the impact of B-vitamin supplementation on cognitive functioning in older adults. The research goals include furthering understanding of human memory dysfunction and addressing topics involving our rapidly growing older population, such as nutrition-based interventions for memory decline.
Jie Sun
Jie earned a Ph.D. in Molecular and Integrative Physiology in December of 2011 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Beckman Institute faculty member Peter Wang's research group. As a Beckman Fellow, Jie will be working with Wang, and will collaborate with Eric Jakobsson from the Computational Multiscale Nanosystems group. Her research is in the area of synthetic biology, with a goal of trying to understand the fundamental principles governing the molecular regulations of signaling transduction in living cells. In her Fellows project, Jie will use protocells as a synthetic platform to reconstitute cellular functions and understand the biological organization of cell signaling.
Baoxing Xu
Baoxing Xu is completing a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University's Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. His thesis topic is on the science of nanofluidics and energy conversion. Baoxing's research involves nanofluidics, fabrication and formation of micro/nanofluidic channels, advanced micro/nano-mechanical characterization of materials and structures, mechanical behavior of advanced materials, and stress-driven pattern in biomaterials and biostructures. At Beckman he will be working with John Rogers from the 3D Micro- and Nanosystems group, and will also have a collaboration with Nancy Sottos and Scott White from the Autonomous Materials Systems group. His research with Rogers will seek to develop a micro/nanofluidics-integrated soft actuator based on conductive polymers for integration with an epidermal electronics system with medical applications. He will work with Sottos and White on integrating the micro/nanofluidic CP actuator inside self-healing materials.
Kyle Mathewson
Kyle is scheduled to earn a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Illinois. He has worked for more than three years in Beckman's Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory with Institute researchers Monica Fabiani and Gabriele Gratton. During his time at Illinois and Beckman, Kyle's research involved cognitive neuroscience, with a focus on attention and awareness in the human visual system. He plans to spend his time as a Beckman Fellow studying the prediction and control of brain states that influence subsequent perception, learning, brain activity, and even consciousness. He plans to take the research outside of traditional laboratory settings, monitoring brain activity during virtual reality situations, in order to predict performance in more ecologically valid environments. Techniques and technology will be developed to monitor and adaptively manipulate these predictive brain states in order to improve cognitive function.
Meredith Silberstein
Meredith is slated to complete a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this spring. Her research interests are in the area of alternative energy harvesting and conversion methods that can perform electrochemical functions while maintaining mechanical integrity. Her work is aimed at developing microstructurally-based models for electro- and/or chemo-mechanically coupled materials that will facilitate system level design and design of new multifunctional composite materials. At Beckman Meredith plans to focus on mechanochemical transduction in synthetic material design, specifically characterization and development of mechanophores.
Joseph Toscano
After completing his Ph.D. in Cognition and Perception at the University of Iowa, Joseph will join the Fellows program to continue his research looking at how the perceptual system uses context information during speech perception. At Beckman he plans to use computational modeling and neuroimaging methods to investigate continuous cue encoding and categorization during speech processing, apply his approaches to spoken word recognition, and examine effects of prosody and audiovisual speech.
Thomas van Dijk
Thomas van Dijk is expected to complete his Ph.D. in Physics at Vrije University in Amsterdam in April. His dissertation has a focus on theoretical and experimental studies in optical coherence theory, while his main areas of research include computed imaging, inverse problems, statistical optics and plasmonics. van Dijk is interested in exploring the theoretical frontiers in bio-optics, which uses light to study, manipulate, and treat biological samples, toward advancing the design of experimental methods and analysis of results. He plans to concentrate his work on problems in the imaging and diagnosis of disease in order to meet both clinical and research needs.
S. Derin Babacan
Derin joined the Beckman Institute from Northwestern University where he completed his Ph.D. work in Electrical Engineering in December, 2009. His research interests are focused on problems in image processing, computer vision, and compressive sensing. He is interested in investigating novel Bayesian modeling and inference procedures that effectively utilize complex signal and degradation models that are consistent with the nature of imaging instruments and subjects. These novel methods could potentially advance the state-of-the-art in many imaging applications.
Simon Fischer-Baum
Simon earned his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from Johns Hopkins University in the fall of 2010. He is currently a William Orr Dingwall Foundation Neurolinguistic Fellow at Johns Hopkins. His research seeks to identify domain-independent principles of cognitive processing, specifically regarding how serial order is represented and processed. This line of research could have implications for many aspects of biological intelligence including more high-level cognitive processes like language and problem solving, and more peripheral processes like perception and motor control.
Malini Ranganathan
Malini earned a Ph.D. in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley by the summer of 2010. Her dissertation research explores the political ecology of water in the city of Bangalore in India, specifically focusing on the implications of market-oriented reforms for equity at the peri-urban interface. At Beckman, she will continue to investigate the specific social and environmental vulnerabilities – particularly related to water infrastructure – of populations living in fringe areas of developing cities. She aims to substantiate the claim that greater resilience to water-related environmental hazards in peri-urban Manila or Bangalore can, in part, be explained by the existence of neighborhood associations, their relationships with the state, and the wider social and political networks in which they operate.
Ilia Solov’yov
Ilia received a Ph.D. in Physics from Frankfurt University in Germany in 2008 and a Candidate of Science degree in Theoretical Physics from the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2009. His current research interests cover a broad range of questions on the structure and dynamics of nanosystems and biomolecules. Specifically his research explores animal magnetoreception in creatures including migratory birds. This work could eventually lead to solutions in protecting airports from birds.
David Mayerich
David completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University. While there he helped develop a prototype microscope capable of quickly imaging large three-dimensional tissue samples. His current research goals are to advance methods for reconstruction and visualization of biomedical data in order to provide an unprecedented understanding of anatomy at the sub-cellular level. He plans to focus on creating sub-cellular anatomical models of tissue as well as better ways to process and visualize datasets provided by new microscope techniques.
Nathan Parks
Nathan completed his Ph.D. in the area of Cognitive and Brain Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research plan concentrates on examining the neural mechanisms of attention, competition, and short-term plasticity within the human visual system. He will use a variety of noninvasive neuro-physiological measures and psychophysical techniques in his investigations.
Edward Wlotko
Eddie earned a Ph.D. from the Brain and Cognition Division of the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research explores how the two hemispheres of the brain each serve language functions that are necessary for comprehension. At the Beckman Institute, he uses the event-related optical signal (EROS) to explore the individual and joint contributions of the cerebral hemispheres to language comprehension, and how those contributions change over the lifespan.