Kelsey Kubelick, a BME Ph.D. candidate, won the Student Paper Competition at this year’s IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium held in Kobe, Japan during October 22-25, 2018. She is currently working with professor Stanislav (Stas) Emelianov in the Ultrasound Imaging and Therapeutics Research Laboratory.

Her paper’s research topic is centered around glaucoma. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world. Disease progression is associated with cell death at the trabecular meshwork (TM), a fluid drainage tissue in the anterior eye. Novel treatments aim to deliver stem cells to the TM to regenerate the tissue and restore function. To aid development of this therapy and expedite clinical translation, in vivo stem cell tracking is needed. This work focuses on development of an ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging platform to track stem cells in the anterior eye and facilitate image-guided therapy by providing real-time feedback to assess and improve stem cell delivery.  

“One of the unique aspects of this project is the span across biology and the imaging sciences,” said Kubelick. “This work is done in conjunction with professor Ross Ethier and one of his recent lab alums, Eric Snider. The highly collaborative nature of this project has expanded the research to many exciting, unexpected directions, and it has been wonderful to work with great group of researchers on this project.”