Nathan Blanke (Bigio lab) became involved with research in the area of neurophotonics in Dr. Erin Purcell’s lab as an undergraduate student at Michigan State University. He began by working with light-dependent transcription factors for targeting neural regeneration, at the tissue-device interface, following implantation. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University in 2017, and is currently a PhD candidate in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. His graduate studies are taking place in the Biomedical Optics Lab, where he will be characterizing neurodegenerative processes using polarized light imaging. The goal is to gain a better understanding of how neurodegenerative disorders manifest and progress in the human brain, so that intervening therapies can eventually be developed. He expects to graduate in May 2022.