Now, in collaboration with Rongguang Liang at the University of Arizona’s Wyant College of Optical Sciences, the director of dentistry at UC Irvine’s Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic and a professor of surgery has developed a commercial intraoral camera with the ability to screen for cancer.

The current method for oral cancer detection involves a professional looking into the mouth and feeling for lumps. Oral cancer lesions are largely heterogeneous, so they present in many different, easy-to-miss forms. Since treatment is planned around an oral biopsy, it’s best to be able to identify and take a sample from the most dangerous part of the lesion.

“There’s everything from little dots with severe cancer to little dots that are healthy and to little areas that are in between,” Wilder-Smith says. “Just by looking at it, I don’t know where to biopsy, because I can’t tell where the most severe disease is.”

Testing has shown that her and Liang’s intraoral camera will boost the accuracy of oral cancer detection from 40 to 60 percent to 87 to 93 percent. This will change dentistry for end-users, says hygienist Cherie Wink, a researcher at the Beckman Laser Institute and an instructor in San Joaquin Valley College’s dental hygiene program.

“As a clinician,” she says, “this device will eliminate the guesswork in interpreting clinical findings, leading to earlier diagnoses and improved patient outcomes.”

The project, which started in 2008, received funding from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health. A patent was recently secured with help from UCI Beall Applied Innovation, which oversees all the campus’s patents and licensing efforts. Alvin Viray, its associate director of licensing, is proud to be part of the project.

“Dr. Wilder-Smith has been nothing short of exceptional,” he says. “Her development of an imaging device for oral cancer detection is both innovative and commercially valuable, while promising to make a profound impact on public health.”

UC Irvine and the University of Arizona own the camera’s patent. While the device has not been licensed yet, Wilder-Smith will soon be seeking a second stage of investors, and Viray is in licensing discussions.

The camera has already seen 10 prototypes. One was smartphone-based and took the form of a phone case that, when connected to an intraoral camera, could image oral lesions. There is currently a final prototype being used for testing and algorithm fine-tuning. The next step is to evaluate it for manufacturing.

In her career at the Beckman Laser Institute, Wilder-Smith has also worked on other devices. She was part of a team that redesigned tools generating aerosol emissions so they would stop spreading aerosol-transmissible illnesses, such as colds and the flu.

Wilder-Smith has also been involved in studies linking topical oral treatments to changes in the microbiome and the gastrointestinal tract, which can have far-reaching consequences for whole-body health. But her main focus now remains on the intraoral camera.

“Quite simply, my goal is to improve oral cancer outcomes,” she says, “because it’s the only major cancer whose outcomes are still getting worse.”

Click here to read full article on UC Irvine News.

– Lori Brandt, UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering

June 28, 2024 – Four UC Irvine engineering assistant professors – Salma Elmalaki, Perry Johnson, Christopher Olivares Martinez and Maxim Shcherbakov — have been recognized this year with Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation. Among NSF’s most prestigious honors, the CAREER award supports young faculty who are academic role models in research and education.

Elmalaki, electrical engineering and computer science, will receive $575,000 over five years from the Division of Computer and Network Systems. Her research aims to design innovative decision-making algorithms for cyberphysical (CPS) systems that consider both the physical aspects of the systems and the complex social-psychological nature of human interactions with these systems.

The rise of smart technologies has enabled a new era of human-technology interaction, which presents tremendous opportunities for a more equitable and privacy-aware societal scale of CPS but also poses formidable challenges. Elmalaki believes that comprehending the intricate relationships between CPS and humans is essential for shaping equitable societal outcomes in future technologies. With this project, she seeks to bridge gaps in current CPS engineering practices by incorporating social-psychological dynamics and societal considerations into innovative solutions. By developing new algorithms, models and tools that seamlessly integrate these dynamics, her research aims to provide a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in the field. “Such psychologically aware decision-making algorithms will enable harmonious interactions, foster equity and optimize overall performance,” said Elmalaki.

Johnson, mechanical and aerospace engineering, is the recipient of $500,000 over five years from the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems.

Johnson’s project aims to reshape our understanding of turbulent boundary layers and how to predict their dynamics. Turbulence plays a key physical role in a wide variety of boundary layer flows related to energy, transportation and national security. As such, improving simulation capabilities for boundary layer turbulence holds the key to accelerating engineering design, optimization and certification while reducing associated costs.

These boundary layers are thin layers of fluid — air or water — adjacent to the immersed body such as an airplane, ship, submarine or wind turbine blade. The performance and efficiency of these vehicles and devices depend crucially on the fluid dynamics in these thin layers. Johnson’s research focuses on two critical areas: the interaction of boundary layers with pressure gradients, which are caused by aerodynamic shaping, crucial for understanding phenomena like turbulent boundary layer separation and its impact on aerodynamic drag; and high-speed effects relevant to hypersonic vehicles. The goal is to develop a new method that is a more cost-effective solution, making it invaluable for design optimization and certification processes in advanced airplane concepts.

Olivares Martinez, civil and environmental engineering, is investigating the impact of wildland-urban interface fires on water quality. He was awarded $559,788 from the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems.

“It was just six years ago, when the world learned about the first reports on volatile cancer-causing chemicals in tap water following fires,” said Olivares Martinez. “Our research aims to understand how these chemicals impact the microbial safety of tap water, something we don’t know anything about.”

As fires become more frequent and severe due to climate change, it is important for researchers and policymakers to understand and mitigate the adverse impacts on drinking water quality and distribution systems. When fires occur at the wildland-urban interface, where humans and their built environment meet and interact with wildland vegetation, the plastic components of drinking water pipes and distribution networks can undergo combustion and chemical breakdown releasing toxic substances including benzene, toluene, styrene and vinyl chloride. These chemicals can contaminate drinking water and promote the growth of microorganisms and harmful pathogens for several months following fires.

Olivares Martinez’s project will look at the release and continued presence of high concentrations of chemicals in water distribution systems following wildfires and if they consume any residual disinfectant in the systems. He will also see if the remaining toxins will metabolize and support the growth of harmful microorganisms in tap water. With his findings, Olivares Martinez hopes to contribute to developing climate adaptation treatments to protect water quality and public health after fires and other climate change disasters.

Shcherbakov, electrical engineering and computer science, was awarded $550,000 from the Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems for his project to improve photonic devices.

Photonics is a powerful technology that enables ever-growing data transfer and inspires novel energy-efficient and reconfigurable architectures that will empower the computers of the future. However, the present diversity of colors in photonic chips calls for a universal approach to transfer signals from one light frequency to another. Currently, chips carry near-infrared signals for communication, visible signals for imaging and mid-infrared for thermal radiation and sensing applications. Conversion between these chips through electronics-driven detection and emission is slow and inefficient.

Shcherbakov’s research will address the problem of efficient frequency conversion on a chip. His project aims to bridge the gap between mid-, near-infrared and visible photonics at the nanoscale by exploring nanostructures called photonic-photonic metasurfaces. He will connect signals across five octaves of light through nonlinear and quantum light-matter interactions. His project proposes to use modern tools of nanotechnology, as well as rigorous numerical design approaches and state-of-the-art optical testing tools, including femtosecond lasers and single-photon correlation techniques. He says, “the results will pave the way to better, more efficient signaling on a chip, enabling advancements in on-chip photonics, impacting computing, signal processing, telecommunication, quantum information and medical imaging technologies.”

Click here to read full article on the UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering website.

– Lori Brandt, UC Irvine Samueli School of Engineering

Michelle Digman has been appointed the next William J. Link Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She will take the reins from the outgoing chair, Zoran Nenadic, on July 1, 2024.

Associate Professor Digman is director and co-investigator of the Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics and director of the W.M. Keck Nanoimaging Lab. As department chair, she will lead and manage the department’s teaching, research and outreach efforts. She is committed to fostering a sense of community among students, scholars and researchers in BME.

“I have always looked up to our former chairs and in particular our current chair Zoran Nenadic, who showed steadfast leadership during one of the most challenging periods we have faced, the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Digman. “Under his guidance, our department not only navigated trying times but also experienced substantial growth.”

Digman serves as the Stacey Nicholas Endowed Chair for Diversity in Engineering Education, adviser to the Samueli School’s Office of Outreach, Access and Inclusion, and BME associate dean for graduate affairs. She also served for five years as co-equity adviser for the school. “I hope these experiences, coupled with the distinction of being the first woman faculty chair in our department, will contribute notably to our department’s continued growth,” said Digman. “My focus will remain on leading our department through a lens of advancing equity, diversity and inclusion, creating opportunities for our students and making an impact on our community.”

Digman joined the UCI faculty in 2013. She earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, a master’s degree and doctorate in chemistry from University of Illinois at Chicago and did postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in physics.

Her research focuses on quantitative spatial and temporal correlation spectroscopy, protein dynamics during cell migration, characterizing metabolic alterations in cells and tissues, and developing novel imaging technologies. She was inducted as a fellow of AIMBE in 2022 and is an Allen Distinguished Investigator and Scialog Fellow. She has also won several awards including the 2023 UCI Early Career/Emerging Innovator of Year Award, Outstanding Faculty Mentorship Award at the LEAD, NSF CAREER award and the Hellman fellowship.

Read more on the UCI Irvine Samueli School of Engineering website.