Kunzan Liu
Kunzan Liu is a PhD candidate in electrical engineering and computer science whose research aims to advance metabolic and structural imaging of living tissues and next-generation imaging tools in biomedicine. As a MathWorks Fellow, Kunzan will pursue a project in 3D optical microscopy aimed at capturing the cellular metabolic dynamics deep within intact and living biological systems. His deep-tissue label-free 3D imaging platform enables precise characterization of metabolic and structural changes in living engineered human multicellular microtissues and significantly outperforms existing techniques. Its modular design (multimode fiber with a slip-on fiber shaper) is anticipated to allow wide adoption of this methodology for demanding in vivo and in vitro imaging applications, including cancer research, autoimmune diseases, and tissue engineering. MATLAB plays a central role in Kunzan’s work, supporting simulation, signal processing, and machine learning, and he is developing open-source tools of value to researchers in imaging, sensing, optics, and optimization. Kunzan’s work has strong potential to advance a plethora of new imaging applications, from health monitoring and pharmaceutical research to disease diagnosis and food sensing.