OpTeC sponsors a colloquium throughout the academic year. This is a forum where a wide range of optical science and engineering topics are discussed at a level that can be understood by a broad spectrum of optics students, staff, and faculty. The primary purposes are to train students to give effective scientific talks and to promote cross-disciplinary interactions of students, staff, faculty, and local industry employees. Speakers include MSU students, staff, and faculty, and visitors from external universities, research labs, and companies.

May 1, 2025
Norm Asbjornson Hall
Room 153

on the Montana State Univeristy Campus

Click here to join via WebEx

Download the flyer here

Tomasz Tkaczyk Photo

Development of the next generation of biophotonic/photonic imaging systems  

Tomasz S. Tkaczyk
Rice University
Professor, Bioengineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering

Abstract

Photonic technologies bridge many fields and enable applications spanning, for example, from biological and biomedical diagnostics to remote sensing and imaging. The new optical design and fabrication methods I developed in my lab provide optical design freedom and allow new system functionalities. This presentation will demonstrate these capabilities and future opportunities, including examples of integrated diagnostic optics and multidimensional snapshot imaging systems. These distinct and different groups both depend on enabling manufacturing/design technologies. I will first present a case study of multimodal biological imaging and diagnostics. The solutions presented will provide morphology and spectrum, two important characteristics that can yield high specificity and sensitivity. Two main groups of devices will be discussed: (1) miniature-integrated imaging microscopes (endo-microscopes) to provide morphological content and (2) multi- and hyperspectral high-speed systems to obtain biochemical signatures. Practical aspects of multimodal system integration, fabrication, and data processing will be discussed, along with design considerations to balance the field of view and resolution of individual sub-systems. Several imaging results will be presented, including (for morphological assessment) contact imaging, confocal, structure illumination, and multi-photon imaging, and (in the area of spectral detection) narrow-band imaging (NBI), image mapping spectrometry IMS, and array snapshot systems. Application examples will include cancer diagnostics for oral, cervical, and esophageal adenocarcinoma. After discussing the multimodal imaging case, I will demonstrate the versatility of the presented approaches and their impact on other fields and their implementations in areas of point of care (POC), retinal functional imaging, brain imaging, remote sensing, etc. The presentation will be closed by discussing future opportunities and their potential impact on bio-photonic and photonic detection. Specifically, I will discuss efforts to allow photonic solutions with additive manufacturing methods.

Biographical Sketch

Tomasz S. Tkaczyk is a professor of Bioengineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Micromechanics and Photonics, Warsaw University of Technology in 2000. He was a postdoctoral fellow and later research associate professor at the College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona (2001-2007). He joined Rice University in 2007. He is a fellow of SPIE, Optica (previously OSA), and AIMBE, and a recipient of the Paul F. Forman Engineering Excellence Award by the Optical Society of America, Norman Edmund Optics Higher Education and Inspiration Awards, and Becton-Dickinson Professional Achievement Award, among other recognitions. His research is in optical engineering and microfabrication with a special focus on microscopic research and medical diagnostics techniques, snapshot hyperspectral imaging systems, and optical system design and fabrication using freeform techniques using diamond machining and additive manufacturing. He co-authored 100+ peer-reviewed and conference publications.

Past Speakers

Date Speaker Group Summary
2/20/2025

Meredith Kupinski

University of Arizona

Tracking the sky's neutral point positions for atmospheric turbidity

1/23/2025

Andrew Oliver

Montana State University

Productization:  Peeling the Onion or How to design and build millions of high-quality devices

10/24/2024

Patrick Franzen

SPIE

Scholarly Publishing in 2024: A publisher's perspective

9/12/2024

Jed Hancock

Space Dynamics Laboratory, Utah State University

Exploring Atmospheric Gravity Waves: NASA's Atmospheric Waves Experiment on the International Space Station

6/13/2024

Matthew Birkebk

Labsphere

Fundamental Calibrations for Remote 
Sensing Sensors Using Integrating Spheres

11/30/2023

Stefan Heinemann

Phix, North America

Packaging technologies of integrated photonics for quantum technology

4/27/2023

Allison Barto

Ball Aerospace

Engineering Discovery: Building NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

3/30/2023

Thomas Coleman

Silixa, LLC

Fiber optic distributed sensing for environmental and infrastructure monitoring

3/23/2023

John Howell

Chapman University

Doppler Gyroscopes: Do we really understand the gyroscope?

2/16/2023

Krishna Rupavatharam, Ph.D.

Spectrum  Lab

Perspectives on the evolution of microwave and quantum photonics at Spectrum Lab

2/9/2023

John W. Sheppard, Ph.D., FIEE

MSU Gianforte School of Computing

Demystifying machine learning through eXplainable AI

1/26/2023

Finland Photonics

Finnish Photonics Cluster

Photonics in Finland

12/8/2022

Nicholas Borys. Ph.D.

MSU Physics

An introduction to the MonArk NSF Quantum Foundry

10/12/2022

Alex Hills

Carnegie Mellon University

Mitigating LEO-to-GEO satellite interference

4/14/2022

Stephen Schultz

Brigham Young University, Electrical & computer Engineering

Dynamic measurement of soft body armor using optical fiber sensing

3/31/2022

Bradley Whitaker

MSU Electrical & Computer Engineering

How machine learning can help scientists who shoot fish and insects with lasers

2/24/2022

Tom Hausekn

Optica

Hot topics in optics and photonics

2/25/2021

Jim Webb1 & Scott Wohlstein2 

1 G.L. Services, Hertfordshire, England
2 The Photonics Group,West Chester, OH

Using the LaserSafePC software for laser safety calculations 

Video

2/4/2021

Brian D'Urso 

MSU Physics Department

Towards precision pulsed levitated optomechanics in a magneto-gravitational trap

1/21/2021

Wataru Nakagawa

MSU ECE Department

Nanophotonics Applications and Sabbatical Exploration

Video

1/14/2021

Nathan Kuehl

Bryan Scherrer

MSU Physics and ECE Dep'ts Kuehl: Troubleshooting, repair and calibration of Burleigh WA-1500 Wavemeter.

Scherrer: Model and simulation of wing-beat modulation lidar for making 3D maps of flying insects .

VIDEO
11/19/2020 Dr. Charles Kankelborg MSU Physics Department

Designing a far ultraviolet spectrometer for the sun as a starAbstract
Video

11/12/2020 Dr. Ioannis Roudis MSU ECE Department  Nonlinear noise in coherent optical communications systems    Abstract
4/09/2015 Dr. James G. Wessel Seagate Corporation Hard Disc-Drive Recording
3/19/2015 Dr. Jake Jacobsen Synopsys, Optical Solution Group A review of optical design software at Synopsys
2/05/2015 Dr. Mark A. Wistey ECE Department, University of Notre Dame Paths to record lasers and solar cells--and on cheap silicon
11/24/2014 Dr. Olav Solgaard ECE Department, Stanford University Miniaturized endoscopes and implantable sensors for in-vivo studies of cancer biology
11/6/2014 Dr. Kirk Knobelspiesse NASA Ames Research Center Cloud thermodynamic phase detection with polarimetrically sensitive passive sky radiometers.
10/30/2014 Dr. Kris Merkel President & CEO S2 Corporation, Bozeman, MT S2 Extreme Bandwidth Analyzer and Correlator (EBAC):Updates on Improvements and Demonstrations
11/14/2013 Dr. Upendra Singh NASA Langley Research Center Development of a pulsed 2-micron integrated-path differential absorption lidar for CO2 measurements
10/31/2013 Qing Gu University of California - San Diego Semiconductor nanolasers for dense chip-scale integration
9/16/2013 Dr. Jim Schwiegerling College of Optical Sciences - University of Arizona Leading edge optics for optimizing vision
5/14/2013 Dr. John Egan Advanced Photonic Crystals The benefits of low temperature hydrothermal crystal growth
4/25/2013 Dr. Edwin ("Ted") Heilweil National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Time-resolved terahertz studies of carrier dynamics in P3HT and zinc-phthalocyanine/C60 nanolayered thin films
2/26/2013 Dr. Larry Johnson and Dr. Mark Carroll Newport Corporation Part 1. Overview of laser diode technology and applications; Part 2. Job opportunities and desired skills for graduates at Newport/ILX Lightwave
2/8/2013 Dr. Toralf Scharf Institute of Microtechnology, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland From achromatic microlenses to submicron focusing: physical optics at the micro-scale