Robert R. Alfano, Distinguished Professor in the Ph.D. Programs in Engineering, Physics, and Psychology at The Graduate Center, CUNY, is the Director of the Institute for Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Lasers (IUSL) at City College. This a world-renowned multidisciplinary research laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment promotes research and education in photonic and laser technologies for scientific, engineering, medical, and industrial applications. Basic and applied photonic research in the areas of laser imaging and medical diagnosis, tunable solid-state lasers and amplifiers, semiconductors, and nonlinear optics are currently being pursued.
Most recently, the IUSL research team announced the development of a new technique that is much more sensitive than conventional fluorescence spectroscopy in detecting cancerous bio-molecules and structures. Called "Stokes Shift Emission Spectroscopy," the method grows out of seminal work done at the IUSL for the past two decades; it was in 1984 that IUSL researchers first demonstrated that light could be used to detect cancer from key molecules without removing tissue. According to Dr. Alfano, "this revolutionary breakthrough will make optical biopsy the new medical frontier for cancer diagnosis and other medical applications... The approach is much more sensitive than ordinary fluorescence spectroscopy and has delivered dramatically improved results in detecting changes in native bio-molecules. It offers great promise, therefore, in detecting cancerous, pre-cancerous, and normal tissue." He called it "a giant step forward" for scientists at the IUSL who pioneered using optical spectroscopy to diagnose cancer without removing tissue. The latest advance has the potential to detect tumors involving the breast, cervix, gastrointestinal tract, head and neck, prostate, liver, brain, kidney, bladder, and other organs. The work has been supported in part by Mediscience Technology Corp. and funds from organized research at The City University of New York.
The IUSL research team includes 18 postdoctoral students, 9 doctoral students, and 2 master's students. To date 44 CUNY students including 5 minority students earned their Ph.D. degrees while pursuing research at IUSL laboratories. The IUSL researchers have published over 670 papers and have been awarded 83 U.S. patents. Dr. Alfano also serves as Director of the NASA Center for Optical Sensing and Imaging, the Department of Defense Center of Nanoscale Photoemitters and Detectors, and New York State Center for Advanced Technology in Ultrafast Photonics.
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