
Field of Study:
Biophysics
Home Institution in the U.S.:
SUNY Albany, Albany, NY
Host Institution in Uzbekistan:
Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers (TIIAME), Tashkent
Start Month/Year in Uzbekistan:
September 2024
Duration of Grant:
Nine months
Alexander Khmaladze
Dr. Alexander Khmaladze is an associate professor in the Department of Physics at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany. He received his PhD from the University of South Florida, where he published several papers on digital holographic phase imaging. He then accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Michigan, where he worked on near-infrared Raman spectroscopy (RS) for biomedical applications. Dr Khmaladze’s research interests include: Raman spectroscopy and microscopy; three-dimensional digital holographic imaging; microscope design; hyperspectral imaging of live cells; and biological tissue imaging.
Dr Khmaladze’s Fulbright project is applying the powerful, label-free technique of RS to discover stain-free optical biomarkers in urologic malignancies. While the classification of cancer tissues has been traditionally performed via a histological assessment, it requires chemical labeling and is time-consuming. RS is a label-free method that employs molecular fingerprinting, which is sensitive to the cancer-associated chemical changes in tissues and cells. RS has shown substantive promise in diagnosing bladder cancer, especially due to its exquisite molecular specificity, which makes RS particularly attractive as a complementary diagnostic tool for real-time guidance during transurethral resection of tumors.