Laserlab-Europe Talks: Adapting to an emerging pandemic to find a role for medical optics in COVID-19 patients and more

Adapting to an emerging pandemic to find a role for medical optics in COVID-19 patients and more Speaker: Turgut Durduran (ICFO) Moderator: Erwin J.G. Peterman (LaserLab Amsterdam) When COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns started, we sought to evaluate whether our technologies for evaluating tissue oxygen metabolism and hermodynamics with photonics could be helpful. A sequence of coincidences, bright postdocoral fellows and an overworked intensive care physician with an amazing insight into the needs came together for us to embark in an international, multi-center clinical trial with minimal funding. This then led to a Horizon 2020 project partially enabled by our longstanding collaborations in LaserLab JRAs. In the talk i will describe the technologies, their fundamental physical background, how we are using them and what we believe their future impact would be.