Principal Investigator
Paola Saccomandi, PhD
Paola is the project coordinator of the ERC Starting Grant LASER OPTIMAL. She received the PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 2014 from "Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma". From 2016 to 2018, Paola has worked at the Institute of Image-guided Surgery of Strasbourg as research fellow and PI of several research projects. She joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Politecnico di Milano in May 2018 as Associate Professor. Her main research interests include the study and development of light-based approaches for tumor treatment and its real time monitoring, and the measurement of physiological parameters.
paola.saccomandi@polimi.it
Group members
Postdoctoral Researchers
Somayeh Asadi, PhD
Somayeh is a PhD graduate in Physics from K. N. Toosi University of Technology, and she was a postdoctoral research member of the Ophthalmic Research Center (ORC) & Tissue engineering Research Center (TERC) of Shahid Beheshti University of medical science. As Research Fellow, her main research interests regard the application of nanoparticles in cancer treatment which includes the in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo studies. She is focusing on both physical simulations about the laser-tissue-nanoparticles interaction, and on related experimental setup.
somayeh.asadi@polimi.it
Mohammadamin Soltani, PhD
Mohammadamin is a PhD graduated in Computer science – Artificial intelligence from Shiraz University, and he was a researcher in Traffic and transportation research center of Shiraz University. As Research Fellow, his main research interests include Optimization, Prediction models, Machine vision, Image processing, Intelligence transportation system (ITS), and Deep Neural Network (DNN). He has also twenty years of experience in web application development, have worked with several frameworks and programming languages include Python, Matlab, C++, Vue.js, Django, Nativescript, PHP, Angular.js, Keras, and Tensorflow.
mohammadamin.soltani@polimi.it
Martina De Landro, PhD
Martina is a PhD Student in MechanicalEngineering. She has received her MS degree in Biomedical Engineering from Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma. She performed MS thesis at the IHU of Strasbourg, where she investigated the use of fiber optic sensors for catheters tracking. Her work focuses on the investigation of sensors and innovative images-based techniques for the monitoring of thermal outcome in tissues undergoing laser ablation.
martina.delandro@polimi.it
Vikas, PhD
Vikas is a Ph.D. graduate in Physics from Central University of Rajasthan (India), and he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at City, University of London. As Research Fellow, his main research interests include plasmonics, nanophotonics, fiber optic sensors, long period gratings, 2-D materials and biosensors. Currently, he is working on the theoretical and experimental design of fiber optic sensors for continuous monitoring of human health and environment.
vikas@polimi.it
Viacheslav Danilov, PhD
Senior ML Engineer and Senior Research Scientist specializing in data science, data analysis, and machine learning development. PhD in Computer Science obtained from Tomsk Polytechnic University in 2020. Over 7 years of experience as an ML Engineer & Researcher in both academic and industry domains. Experienced with every stage of the development cycle for dynamic AI projects. Well-versed in numerous programming languages and frameworks including Python, R, TensorFlow, Keras, and PyTorch. Worked extensively on ML tasks using a wide range of AWS services like EC2, IAM, S3, ECR, and SageMaker. Strong background in data analysis, mathematical modeling, image processing, and visualization.
viacheslav.v.danilov@gmail.com
PhD Students
Sanzhar Korganbayev
Sanzhar is a Ph.D. Student in Mechanical Engineering. He has received his MS degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. His research interests include fiber optic sensors and their applications for thermal and mechanical measurements. His current work focuses on the development of software for real-time temperature monitoring and intra-operative adjustment of the laser ablation settings during tumor treatment.
sanzhar.korganbayev@polimi.it
Leonardo Bianchi
Leonardo is a Ph.D. Student in Mechanical Engineering. He has received his MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. His MSc thesis concerned gold nanorods-enhanced laser ablation for tumor treatment, and it was developed within the LASER OPTIMAL project, in collaboration with the Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope, California (USA). His research interests deal with the investigation of laser-biological tissue interaction in presence of nanoparticles, the numerical modeling and experimental assessment of nanoparticle-mediated laser ablation for tumorous tissue removal.
leonardo.bianchi@polimi.it
Davide Paloschi
Davide is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical engineering. He is currently involved in the LASER OPTIMAL - POLIMI project in collaboration with Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma for the designing and prototyping of a wearable system for posture monitoring. He has received his MS degree in Automation and Control Engineering from Politecnico di Milano. As a Research Fellow, his main research interests regard the 3D reconstruction of the shape of optical fibers undergoing mechanical deformation.
davide.paloschi@polimi.it
Alessandro Bossi
Alessandro is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering. He has received his master's degree in Physics Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (fall 2021). His master thesis was on time-domain diffuse Raman (TDDR), where he finalized a TDDR spectrometer. His research includes Diffuse optics and Raman spectroscopy. His main research interest is the study of the optical properties during thermal therapies using diffuse optical techniques to estimate the amount of damage received by a tissue.
alessandro.bossi@polimi.it
Research fellows
Pouya Namakshenas
Pouya holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from K. N. Toosi University of Technology. His research has been mainly dedicated to In Silico Oncology, particularly in the areas of Therapeutic Ultrasound, Hyperthermia Therapy, and Targeted Drug Delivery. He was selected to conduct part of the LASER OPTIMAL project under the European Research Council (ERC) grant, collaborating with the Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma. As a researcher at Politecnico di Milano, he is developing a computational model to optimize the laser interstitial thermotherapy for pancreatic tumor ablation. His final research goal is to translate patient-specific simulation models into clinical practice for optimal tumor removal.
pouya.namakshenas@polimi.it
Fellowships
Sundeep Singh, PhD
Sundeep is a Ph.D. graduate in Mechanical Engineering (Thermo-fluids) from the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, India. He was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada from 2019 to 2020 and was involved in the research related to the development of coupled multiscale Multiphysics models for bioengineering and neuroscience applications. Since, 2021 he is working as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Calgary, Canada on several research projects related to numerical simulations of viscoelastic fluids. His main research interest includes thermo-fluids, bio-heat transfer, bio-electromagnetics, computational fluid dynamics, computational modeling and simulation of thermal therapies for tumor treatment, and coupled multiscale problems in bioengineering.
ssingh@wlu.ca
Andrea Pacheco, PhD
Andrea was born in Tunja – Colombia. She received her bachelor and master degree in Physics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Sede Bogotá). She has experience in optical design, spectroscopy, translational research, tissue-optics, and science communication. She did her PhD. in Science – Physics in Biophotonics team at Tyndall National Institute (Ireland). She conceives biophotonics as the bridge between research in the laboratory and the development of the next generation of diagnostics and therapeutic clinical tools in the 21st century. Her PhD challenge was to evaluate the strengths and limitations in the clinical translation of Near Infra-red gas spectroscopy to develop a non-invasive bed side clinical device, to monitor lung function in neonates. She manufactures realistic tissue phantoms and computational tools to test and optimize the existent clinical prototypes, and participated in the NIOMI (Non-Invasive Lung Oxygen Monitoring of Term Infants) observational study at the University Maternity Hospital in Cork, contributing to the clinical translation of a technology which will greatly help in the respiratory health care of the most vulnerable patients.
andrea.pacheco@tyndall.ie
Past Memebers
Annalisa Orrico
Annalisa is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering. She is working on the HYPERSIGHT project in our lab. Annalisa has received her Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering - Production System (Fall 2020). Her Master Thesis was focused on numerical simulation and LabVIEW development of temperature-driven software for controlling laser ablation therapies in biological tissue.
annalisa.orrico@polimi.it
Ahad Mohammadi, PhD
Ahad has received his MS degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tehran. His MSc thesis majored in designing control systems in the presence of incomplete data by using Artificial Intelligence methods. His research interests fit to computational fluid dynamics, Optimization, and Design and Modeling of Transport Phenomena. He is currently involved in the LASER OPTIMAL project to develop a reliable simulation to analyze the laser ablation process behavior, which would be able to determine the physical and thermal behavior of biological tissues.
Ahad.mohammadi@polimi.it
Nava Schulmann, PhD
Nava holds a PhD in Physics from Charles Sadron Institute, CNRS - Strasbourg, France. As a postdoctoral research fellow in the context of the LASER OPTIMAL project she develops a stochastic filtering framework, that aims at providing an optimal temperature map estimation, by combining bio-physical models with real-time measurements. Nava’s past research lies in the area of Complex Materials. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science (2013-2015), she participated in a science-educational project, targeting the fundamentals of Statistical Physics. As a research engineer at ICube, within the Mimesis team of Inria (2018-2019), she worked on questions related to stochastic filtering, parameter estimation and system observability.
navadebora.schulmann@polimi.it
Alumni Master Students
Edoardo Oriana
Edoardo is a Master student in Mechanical Engineering - Mechatronics and Robotics. He has received the Bachelor degree in Aerospace Engineering in 2016 at Politecnico di Milano. During his studies at Politecnico di Milano he has started to work as a teacher, first as a GMAT teacher in a private school and later as a Telecommunications teacher in a secondary school. He is currently developing his Master Thesis in the 3D reconstruction of the shape of optical fibers subjected to deformations, working on the code implementation and studying the possible applications in the Biomedical field.
edoardo.oriana@mail.polimi.it
Federica Morra
Federica has received her Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering - Production System in 2020 (summer). She has received her first Bachelor's degree in Medical Radiology Techniques in 2011 from Università di Foggia. After 2 years working as a Radiographer, she began her studies at Politecnico di Milano and received a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2016. In 2017 she worked as a Project Designer. Her Master Thesis in the LASER OPTIMAL project was focused on the experimental setup realization and optimization for laser ablation.
federica.morra@mail.polimi.it
Riccardo Pini
Riccardo has received his Master of Science degree in Automation and Control Engineering in 2020 (spring). During his studies at Politecnico di Milano he has become interested in the sensoristic aspect of automatic systems. He performed his Master Thesis in the LASER OPTIMAL project and has worked on the feedback system for the real-time monitoring and regulation of laser beams in laser ablation treatments.
riccardo.pini@mail.polimi.it