Irene Georgakoudi

Overview

Georgakoudi's passion for using lasers for therapeutic and diagnostic applications was sparked in the basement of Wilder Hall at Dartmouth, where she pursued undergraduate research and her degree in physics. She explored the photophysics of photodynamic therapy of cancer as a PhD student at the University of Rochester and was introduced to the power and promise of label-free, laser-based diagnostics as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. Before returning to Dartmouth to join the engineering faculty, she was a professor of biomedical engineering and director of the Advanced Microscopic Imaging Center at Tufts University. Prior to that, she served as an instructor at the Wellman Laboratories for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Her work aims to develop technologies that harness the natural "glow" of cellular and extracellular tissue components, to enable a new level of understanding of tissue function and dysfunction over multiple scales and across the continuum of processes involved in aging and the development of diseases.

Research Interests

Label-free high resolution tissue imaging; non-linear microscopy; metabolic imaging; matrix characterization; in vivo flow cytometry; cancer detection; osteoarthritis; neurodegenerative diseases

Education

BA, Physics, Dartmouth 1993
MSc, Biophysics, University of Rochester 1996
PhD, Biophysics, University of Rochester 1999

Awards

NSF Career Award
Claflin Distinguished Scholar Award
American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award
Selected speaker, NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series

Professional Activities

Associate Editor, Optica
Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)
Fellow, Optica
Fellow, SPIE

Selected Publications

A mitochondrial NADPH-cholesterol axis regulates extracellular vesicle biogenesis to support hematopoietic stem cell fate. Bonora M, Morganti C, van Gastel N, Ito K, Calura E, Zanolla I, Ferroni L, Zhang Y, Jung Y, Sales G, Martini P, Nakamura T, Lasorsa FM, Finkel T, Lin CP, Zavan B, Pinton P, Georgakoudi I, Romualdi C, Scadden DT, Ito K. Cell Stem Cell, 7;31(3):359-377.e10. doi: 10.1016/j.stem.2024.02.004. (2024)
Deep learning-enabled detection of rare circulating tumor cell clusters in whole blood using label-free, flow cytometry. Vora N, Shekar P, Hanulia T, Esmail M, Patra A, Georgakoudi I. Lab on a Chip 24 (8), 2237-2252. (2024)
Noninvasive Imaging Techniques for Monitoring Cellular Response to Treatment in Stable Vitiligo. Shiu J, Lentsch G, Polleys CM, Mobasher P, Ericson M, Georgakoudi I, Ganesan AK, Balu M. J Invest Dermatol, 144(4):912-915.e2. doi: 10.1016/j.jid.2023.10.006. (2024)
Evaluation of a polarization-enhanced laparoscopy prototype for improved intra-operative visualization of peritoneal metastases. Schnelldorfer T, Gnanatheepam E, Trout R, Gado A, Pelletier JE, Dinh LT, Hunter M, Georgakoudi I. Sci Rep, 9;13(1):14892. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-41361-5. (2023)
Label-free, multi-parametric assessments of cell metabolism and matrix remodeling within human and early-stage murine osteoarthritic articular cartilage. Liu Z, Hui Mingalone CK, Gnanatheepam E, Hollander JM, Zhang Y, Meng J, Zeng L, Georgakoudi I. Commun Biol, 13;6(1):405. doi: 10.1038/s42003-023-04738-w. (2023)
Mitochondria dysregulation contributes to secondary neurodegeneration progression post-contusion injury in human 3D in vitro triculture brain tissue model. Liaudanskaya V, Fiore NJ, Zhang Y, Milton Y, Kelly MF, Coe M, Barreiro A, Rose VK, Shapiro MR, Mullis AS, Shevzov-Zebrun A, Blurton-Jones M, Whalen MJ, Symes AJ, Georgakoudi I, Nieland TJF, Kaplan DL. Cell Death Dis, 3;14(8):496. doi: 10.1038/s41419-023-05980-0. (2023)
Extracellular Hsp90 Binds to and Aligns Collagen-1 to Enhance Breast Cancer Cell Invasiveness. Singh P, Ramanathan V, Zhang Y, Georgakoudi I, Jay DG. Cancers, 15 (21), 5237 2. (2023)
Formalin fixation and paraffin embedding interfere with the preservation of optical metabolic assessments based on endogenous NAD (P) H and FAD two-photon excited fluorescence. Sánchez-Hernández A, Polleys CM, Georgakoudi I. Biomedical Optics Express, 14 (10), 5238-5253. (2023)
Label-free optical metabolic imaging in cells and tissues. Georgakoudi I, Quinn KP. Annual review of biomedical engineering, 25 (1), 413-443. (2023)