Agata Kotulska, PhD

University Degree:

Master’s degree from the Wrocław University of Technology, Faculty of Fundamental Technological Problems, majoring in Technical Physics, with a specialization in Nanoengineering. Doctoral degree from the Wlodzimierz Trzebiatowski Institute of Low Temperatures and Structural Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wroclaw.

Description

Agata Kotulska’s engineering and master’s thesis was carried out in the Optics of Fiber Optics Group, and concerned the theoretical and experimental investigation of the properties of transmission parameters of optical fibers.

As a continuation of her scientific work, Ms. Agata Kotulska carried out research in the field of optical spectroscopy, at the Włodzimierz Trzebiatowski Institute of Low Temperatures and Structural Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wrocław.

Ms. Agata Kotulska’s doctoral thesis, whose supervisor was Prof. Artur Bednarkiewicz, concerned the luminescence properties of nanocrystals doped with lanthanide ions. The thematic scope of the conducted research included the characterization of the properties of Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) and Photon Avalanche (PA) phenomena. The goal of Ms. Kotulska’s dissertation was to conduct experiments related to the aforementioned phenomena, including measurements of emission spectra and luminescence lifetimes, as well as the creation of physical models and analysis of the spectroscopic processes studied.

Currently, Dr. Kotulska is employed in the Optical Physics and Biophotonics group (Optical Imaging team) at ICTER as a Postdoctoral Fellow.

In her free time from research, Dr. Agata Kotulska enjoys hiking in the mountains.

Marta Mikuła-Zdańkowska, PhD Eng.

University Degree:

PhD degree at the Warsaw University of Technology (2021)

Position at ICTER:

Post-doc

Research Areas:

interferometry, digital holography microscopy, optical metrology, biophotonics

Scopus Profile: 0000-0002-4451-2492
Researcher's ORCID Id: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4451-2492
Description

Dr. Marta Mikuła-Zdańkowska graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw (Application of Physics in Biology and Medicine, specialist – Ocular Optics and Optometry) and in 2012 started her master’s studies at Warsaw University of Technology (Photonics Engineering).

Her doctoral work was devoted to digital holographic microscopy for optical microobject shape reconstruction. The aim of the research carried out within the framework of her PhD studies was to develop new solutions and measurement methods in holographic microscopy to overcome the basic measurement limitations of this technique.

Dr. Mikuła-Zdańkowska joined the Physical Optics and Biophotonics team at ICTER in December 2022 for a postdoctoral position within the NCN DAINA project. At our centre, she is expanding her knowledge and combining her experience in optometry and photonics by developing the OCT method.

Natalia Ochocka-Lewicka, PhD

University Degree:

Dr. Natalia Ochocka-Lewicka obtained her Master’s degree in Neurosciences in 2016 from Charité Universitätsmedizin in Berlin and Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. In 2022, she earned her PhD in Biological Sciences.

Research Areas:

cellular heterogeneity of the tumor microenvironment and sex differences in immune activation in response to tumors

Researcher's ORCID Id: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1464-6382
Description

During her doctoral studies Dr. Ochocka-Lewicka studied the role of immune cells in glioma progression at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw. She was also engaged in commercial projects on TCR immunotherapies.

Dr. Ochocka-Lewicka was a leader of an NCN Preludium grant. She is also a laureate of the FNP START award and a co-author of 8 publications, including papers in Nature Communications and Cell Reports.

At ICTER, she currently works in the Computational Genomics group as a Postdoctoral Fellow; her position is linked to the OPUS 21 grant.

Sathi Goswami, PhD

Description

Dr. Sathi Goswami obtained her PhD in biophysical chemistry from Saha Institute of Nuclear
Physics, under the University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India in 2018. During her PhD she studied
the interaction of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and their metal complexes with DNA
and proteins through spectroscopic and imaging studies. She also studied the effect of these
drugs and complexes on standard cancer cells HeLa to demonstrate the changes in the epigenetic
level. Then she joined as a postdoctoral fellow at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay,
Maharashtra, India in 2018. In postdoctoral studies her research was focused on the
characterization of drug-protein interaction using different spectroscopy. In September 2022, she
joined Integrated Structural Biology lab at ICTER as a postdoctoral fellow to work on the
structure and functions of various proteins involved in the visual cycle.

Jakub Bogusławski, PhD

University Degree:

PhD, from Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland.

Position at ICTER:

Visiting Researcher

Research Areas:

ultrafast fiber lasers, lasers for biophotonics, two-photon imaging of the eye, multiphoton microscopy, optoelectronics,

Description

His scientific interests are two-photon excited fluorescence imaging of the eye and building novel, femtosecond flight sources for this application. Jakub’s primary expertise is designing and developing lasers and electro-optical systems to facilitate new eye diagnostics and care capabilities.

Holding a doctoral degree, Jakub is currently a Visiting Researcher working in biophotonics, developing novel light sources and imaging modalities for eye imaging and diagnostics.

Mehdi Borjkhani, PhD

University Degree:

PhD, University of Teheran in Iran,  Tehran Polytechnic in Iran

Position at ICTER:

Post-doc

Research Areas:

Neuronal Nets

Postdoctoral fellow, his research activity includes modeling the neuronal nets created from a multitude of different neuronal populations and data analysis.

Michał Dąbrowski, PhD

University Degree:

University Degree: PhD thesis in quantum optics, graduated in 2019 (Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, with honours)

Position at ICTER:

post-doc

Research Areas:

quantum optics, AMO physics, light scattering, optical imaging, wavefront shaping techniques

Description

During my PhD studies I participated in experiments on storage of quantum states inside atomic medium (so-called quantum memory). I have shown that it is possible to store and retrieve on-demand multiple photons as well as change the properties of resulting entangled state, using the spatial light modulator (SLM). The main motivation has been the creation of single-photon processor able to perform specific tasks for more complicated quantum circuits. Based on my previous experience I have started the postdoctoral fellow in the field of quantum optics with scattering media, having in the back of my head the applications for biological imaging. In my research project I tried to build a quantum simulator based on wavefront shaping + scattering processes in complex media. The fascinating world of light scattering brings me to the second postdoctoral position in the current group where I realized the project about two-photon fluorescence of the human eye to avoid scattering and absorption in the eye coming from visible-light excitation which paves the way for better understanding of a vision process.

Piotr Kasprzycki PhD

University Degree:

Doctor of Philosophy – PhD, Physics, University of Warsaw, Poland

Position at ICTER:

Postdoctoral Researcher

Research Areas:

Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography, time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy

Postdoctoral Researcher in bioimaging, designs and builds an innovative polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) system and studies time-resolved fluorescence signals from the human eye.

He obtained a PhD in Physics from the University of Warsaw in 2018. During his doctoral studies, he specialized in time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy of photoactive organic molecules and the time-correlated single-photon counting technique.