Last week, Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) welcomed senior scientist PI of National Research Council (CNR) of Italy Dan Cojoc to campus. He had been invited to give the 165th lecture in the Biomedical Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series, in which he gave a fascinating lecture entitled, “Cell Mechanics Investigated with Optical Techniques.” Professor Jiang Xingyu, Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering hosted the lecture.

Dr. Dan Cojoc 

In his lecture, Dr. Dan Cojoc talked about investigating the mechanical properties of cells represents a high potential in finding label-free markers of cancer and other diseases. He discussed the application of two optical techniques to cell mechanics: optical tweezers (OT) and quantitative phase imaging (QPI). Moreover, he introduced  QPI as a non-contact technique allowing to measure cell stiffness and compare it with OT and AFM.  Finally, he showed that OT is an adequate tool to study cell mechanotransduction.

Chair Prof. Xingyu Jiang and Dr. Dan Cojoc