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Cynthia Reinhart-King completed her undergraduate studies at MIT, majoring in both biology and chemical engineering with a minor in biomedical engineering. During her time as an undergraduate, she worked in the laboratory of Prof. Douglas Lauffenburger, investigating the synergistic effects of soluble growth factors and extracellular matrix proteins on cell behavior. As a Whitaker Graduate Fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, she has worked in the laboratory of Prof. Daniel Hammer investigating mechanisms of endothelial cell adhesion and traction generation. She will join the Cornell Biomedical Engineering faculty in 2007, after completing postdoctoral work at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y. Her research interests include mechanisms of tissue morphogenesis and biomaterial design, with specific focus on the cardiovascular system.

Chris B. Schaffer previously was assistant project scientist in the Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, where he developed linear and nonlinear optical techniques for precise manipulation and visualization of in vivo biological systems and used these methods to study dynamics in cerebral blood flow networks following the occlusion of small vessels. Before this, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, also at UC San Diego. In his position he worked on experimental ultrafast optics and microscopy development. This involved the development of new nonlinear microscopy techniques and investigation of methods to optimize laser parameters for nonlinear microscopy and micromachining.

Shaffer received his Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 2001. His dissertation was titled “Interaction of femtosecond laser pulses with transparent materials.” He received a B.S. in physics with highest honors in 1995 and post-baccalaureate studies in physics (completed August 1996).

Warren R. Zipfel previously was a member of the Department of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell. He received his B.S. in biochemistry from Cornell in 1987 and his Ph.D. in biophysics, also from Cornell, in 1993. His thesis topic was modeling photon capture, excitation energy transfer and charge transfer in photosynthesis. Zipfel is associate director of the Developmental Resource for Biophysical Imaging and Opto-Electronics, an NIH/NIBIB Resource at Cornell University. Previously he was senior research associate in Applied and Engineering Physics. He is a member of the external advisory committee of the Indiana Center for Biological Microscopy he has consulted for Zeiss Microimaging on laser-scanning microscopy, Spectra-Physics Lasers on ultrafast lasers for multiphoton microscopy, and Hamamatsu Corporation on photodetector development. He is a member of the Biophysical Society, Optical Society of the America (OSA), SPIE (International Society for Optical Engineering), and the Mathematical Association of America. Warren’s research focuses on the development of optical techniques and instrumentation for biomedical research with emphasis on in vivo imaging for cancer detection.