Lab Members
Principal Investigator
Paul Dayton, Ph.D
Professor
Paul Dayton received his B.S. in Physics from Villanova University in 1995, his M.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1998, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering in 2001, also from the University of Virginia. He pursued post-doctoral research and was later research faculty at the University of California at Davis. Much of Dr. Dayton’s training was under the mentorship of Dr. Katherine Ferrara, where his initial studies involved high speed optical and acoustical analysis of individual contrast agent microbubbles. In 2007, Dr. Dayton moved to the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC Chapel Hill and NC State University, Raleigh, where he is now Associate Professor and Associate Department Chair. Dr. Dayton is currently Associate Director for Education for the Biomedical Imaging Research Center, and his research interests involve ultrasound contrast imaging, ultrasound-mediated therapies, and medical devices. Dr. Dayton is a member of the technical program committee for IEEE UFFC, and a member of the editorial boards for the journals IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control as well as Molecular Imaging, and Bubble Science, Engineering, and Technology.
Laboratory Staff
James Tsuruta, Ph.D
Research Assistant Professor
Dr. Tsuruta is a faculty member in the department of pediatrics and cell and developmental biology. His work involves the interactions of ultrasound with biological tissues. Dr. Tsuruta also contributes his knowledge of biochemistry to histology and molecular targeting applications.
Virginie Papadopoulou, Ph.D
Research Assistant Professor – Divers Alert Network Scholar
Dr. Papadopoulou is a physicist by background and received her PhD in Bioengineering in 2016 from Imperial College London. She became a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC Chapel Hill in 2017, where her research aims to bridge the different areas dealing with bubbles and ultrasound. Her current interests lie in: a) refining the imaging and analysis of ultrasonically detected decompression emboli in the context of decompression sickness; b) using oxygen microbubbles to modulate tumor hypoxia and improve radiotherapy; and c) enhancing topical drug-delivery using phase-change contrast agents, most recently in the context of chronic wound biofilm infections. Her work has resulted in over 35 journal papers, 95 conference presentations and 17 invited presentations to date. She has been awarded the 2017 Divers Alert Network/Bill Hamilton Memorial Grant by the Women Divers Hall of Fame, the 2020 Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Young Scientist Award, as well as the title of Divers Alert Network Scholar since 2018, for her on-going work creating a dynamic ultrasonic assessment of decompression bubbles. Dr. Papadopoulou has experience managing research grants, including multi-year collaborations with multiple clinical and basic research collaborators, as well as industrial partners. She currently manages three multi-year grants, as well as other smaller grants. She serves as the Principal Investigator (PI) of a 3-year US Department of Defense grant by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and 5-year research foundation grant from the Divers Alert Network (DAN), currently mentoring one postdoctoral student, two graduate students and multiple undergraduate students. She is also co-Investigator and lead scientist with PI Prof. Dayton of a 5-year US National Institute of Health (NIH) R01 grant assessing oxygen microbubbles for radiotherapy sensitization, and UNC PI for a new industrial-academic collaboration funded by the ONR. Dr. Papadopoulou also serves as PI for an ONR STEM grant and closely collaborates with DAN on outreach efforts for diving physiology research. Most recently, she has been awarded the annual 2022 UNC Women’s Leadership Council Faculty Mentoring Award for Undergraduate Mentoring, and the Fall 2022 UNC BME Faculty Teaching and Mentoring Achievement.
Jinwook Kim, Ph.D
Research Assistant Professor
Jinwook Kim received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea, in 2010 and 2012, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University (NC State University), Raleigh, NC, USA, in 2017, with a focus on miniaturized ultrasound transducers for cavitation-mediated imaging and therapy. He is currently a Research Assistant Professor at the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA, and NC State University. His research interests include ultrasound transducer development, acoustic simulation, acoustic hologram design, cavitation, and ultrasound therapy.
Brian Velasco, BA
Senior Research Technician/Laboratory Manager
Marjan Mehrab Mohseni, MS
Research Technician
Marjan Mehrab-Mohseni received a BS in Applied Chemistry from Tehran University, Iran, an MSc in Molecular Cell Biology from Uppsala University, Sweden in 2008. Marjan started her research working on the molecular pathogenesis of liver disease. During her master thesis at Karolinska Institute, she worked on cancer epigenetics and showed that human cytomegalovirus infection alters global DNA methylation capacity. Following immigration to United States, Marjan worked on the molecular pathogenesis of HCV at Carolinas Medical Center where she showed that Legaoln-Sil can down-regulate HCV in vitro through altering expression of tight junction components. Marjan research has so far led to more than 10 publications and 200 citations in prestigious journals. Marjan currently doing her research at UNC under supervision of Dr. Paul Dayton from BME and Dr. Samantha Pattendon from UNC School of pharmacy. In here recent work, Marjan has developed a novel cavitation-enhancement nanodroplet reagent which can decrease the time and acoustic energy required for gDNA fragmentation. gDNA is one the most sensitive, time- consuming steps of epigenetic assays like, CHIP, Fair and next-generation sequencing. Marjan has also showed that cavitation enhancement increases the efficiency and consistency of chromatin fragmentation from fixed cells for downstream quantitative applications.
Post-Doctoral Fellows
Arian Azarang, Ph.D
Arian Azarang received the BS degree and the first rank award from Shiraz University, Iran, in 2015, and the MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Tarbiat Modares University, Iran, in 2017. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2021. He was recognized as the Honorable Mention of the David Daniel Thesis Award for the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received the Research Excellence Award from the joint Biomedical Engineering Department in 2022. His research interests include real-time signal and image processing, applied deep learning in biomedical fields, and speech recognition and enhancement. He has thus far authored or co-authored 21 scholarly publications in these areas. He has become an Associate Editor of the Springer journal Signal, Image and Video Processing since 2021.
Phillip Durham, Ph.D
Dr. Durham has worked in the fields of drug delivery, nanotoxicology and ultrasound imaging research for over a decade. His research in the Dayton Lab includes novel applications in both imaging and therapeutic ultrasound, using microbubbles and nanodoplets for disrupting bacterial biofilms, modulating radiotherapeutic efficacy, and delivery across the blood-brain barrier.
Graduate Students
Ryan DeRuiter
Ryan was born and raised in Cary, North Carolina. He left the state for his undergraduate education at Mercer University. There he earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) degree, specializing in biomedical engineering and minoring in mathematics. Ryan joined the Dayton and Pinton Labs in the Fall of 2017. His current research focus is super-resolution ultrasound imaging via ultrafast ultrasound localization microscopy (uULM).
Jake McCall
Jake is a fourth year electrical and computer engineering PhD candidate at NC State. He got involved in the Dayton lab through a series of unexpected circumstances that ultimately led him to the exciting work that he does now. Jake’s research is in developing software for acquiring 3-D ultrasound scans of microvasculature at high resolution using a process called ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM). Jake is in the process of completing three studies currently, all of which have to do with using this non-invasive imaging method to characterize the malignancy of tumors in both rodents and people.
Kathlyne Bautista
Kathlyne graduated with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in 2020. In Fall 2020, she joined the Dayton Lab as a PhD student. Her current projects include (1) advancing dual-frequency superharmonic ultrasound imaging (acoustic angiography) towards clinical translation (through simulations, hardware improvements, and machine learning) and (2) optimizing the therapeutic efficacy of nanodroplet-enhanced sonothrombolysis for the treatment of venous thrombosis.
Hanjoo Lee
Hanjoo joined our lab in Fall 2021 after earning a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin Madison. He’s currently working on a safety experiment with super-resolution parameters and Cardiac Sonoporation research. Hanjoo, who is from Lexington, Massachusetts, likes to apply his Electrical Engineering skills on a variety of works like an ECG made with an Arduino, making him an incredibly useful resource for lab members who enjoys tinkering with things involving microcontrollers.
Josh Currens
Josh completed a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Biotechnology from North Carolina State University in 2021. In Fall 2021, he joined the Dayton Lab and the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. Josh’s research focuses on ultrasound technology implementation in decompression studies, working towards the development of an early biomarker for decompression sickness. In 2022, Josh received the Zale Parry scholarship for his work in underwater research.
Hatim Belgharbi
Hatim received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the Polytechnique Montreal in 2019. He received his Master’s degree in 2021 at the same university while under the supervision of Dr. Jean Provost. His master’s thesis focused on an anatomically-realistic simulation framework for ultrasound localization microscopy (ULM). He is now pursuing a Ph.D. in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and NC State University. Hatim joined the Dayton and Pinton Labs in Fall 2021, where he is currently working on implementing clinically translatable ULM imaging.
Katherine Mary Eltz
Kelly Vantreeck
Kelly is a second year graduate student at UNC pursuing her PhD in pharmaceutical sciences. She graduated with B.S. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2019. Following graduation, she worked in reproductive health research and contraceptive development. Kelly joined the Dayton Lab in Spring 2023. Her research focuses on therapeutic applications of ultrasound, including using ultrasound and contrast to enhance cancer immunotherapy efficacy and antibiotic delivery to biofilm infections.
Jacob Mattern
Tyler Gildemeister
Andrew Weitz
Roshni Gandhi
Roshni graduated with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2023. She joined the Dayton lab in Fall 2023 as a part of the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University to pursue a PhD. Her research interests include targeted therapeutics, ultrasound contrast agents, and therapeutic ultrasound.
Jadyn Cook
Undergraduate Students
Kamellia Karimpour
Andrew Hoang
Bryce Menichella
Emily Stein
Christian Nightingale
Christian is an undergraduate in the UNC-Chapel Hill/NCSU joint department of biomedical engineering focusing on regenerative and pharmaceutical engineering
Albert Choi
Albert is a senior undergraduate student, majoring in Biomedical Engineering at UNC Chapel Hill with concentrations in microdevices and rehab engineering. He joined the lab in Spring of 2023 and is currently working on a project with Jake McCall through the Lucas Fellowship. He is interested in learning about the non-invasive methods of characterizing malignancies and how the software relating to these techniques compare. He hopes to attend medical school upon graduation.