Spectroscopy Magazine's Emerging Leader in Molecular Spectroscopy Award
2019 Recipient
Ishan Barman, John Hopkins University
Ishan Barman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University with joint appointments in the Departments of Oncology, and Radiology and Radiological Science. He is also a senior investigator of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)- funded Laser Biomedical Research Center. He graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and then moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his Ph.D., where he investigated transcutaneous blood analyte detection using Raman spectroscopy. His doctoral research established many of the experimental and computational methods that are now common to in vivo spectroscopic investigations, notably tissue turbidity correction, integration of nonimaging optical elements, and non-linear chemometric analysis. Following a postdoctoral stint at the G. R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory at MIT, Dr. Barman established his independent group at the Johns Hopkins University in 2014.
His laboratory’s research is focused on the development of cutting-edge and transformative biophotonics technologies with the goal of disease detection at early, manageable stages, monitoring therapeutic effects and treatment outcomes, and guiding interventions. Specifically, his work features spectroscopic imaging, which combines the molecular basis of spectroscopy with the imaging capabilities of microscopy and bridges the chemical and morphologic domains. The optical tools generated from these investigations have been successfully adopted in diverse biomedical environments including in automated recognition of biopsy specimen, real-time diagnosis of middle ear pathology, and as a customized monoclonal antibody identification platform. More recently, Dr. Barman’s group has leveraged the molecular specificity and multiplexing capability of nanostructured plasmonic probes to develop serum assays for asymptomatic surveillance of cancer survivors and speedy assessment of treatment benefit.
His work has been extensively published in journals such as Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Cancer Research, Angewandte Chemie, Chemical Science, Analytical Chemistry, and Accounts of Chemical Research, and has also been prominently featured in leading scientific (Technology Review, Physics Today, Physics World, C&E News) and popular media (Wall St. Journal, CNN Newsroom with Ali Velshi) outlets. He has received numerous awards for his research contributions, notably the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Maryland Outstanding Young Engineer Award, American Society for Lasers in Surgery and Medicine (ASLMS) Dr. Horace Furumoto Innovations Young Investigator Award, and the Tomas Hirschfeld Award by the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies.
For information about how to nominate someone for the award, please see the call for nominations.
Past Recipients
2018 Megan Thielges
2017 Russ Algar
2016 Matthew Baker