Dr. Vadim Backman, Director
Vadim Backman is the Sachs Family Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Professor of Medicine (Oncology), Biochemistry, and Molecular Genetics at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and Program Leader in Cancer and Physical Sciences and Associate Director for Engineering and Technology at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Backman's research bridges advances in super-resolution biophotonics, computational genomics, modeling, and cancer biology. The work spans from physics of gene expression to development of new optical imaging, sensing, and computational genome modeling technologies to novel diagnostics, therapeutic, and chromatin engineering technology development and to large-scale clinical trials. On the technology side, the main focus is on the development of biophotonics technologies to image tissue at the nanoscale and molecular levels with the focus on multi-scale chromatin imaging and modeling technologies to elucidate gene expression from the first principles of physics. From the translational perspective, the focus is on the development of a principally new platform for early detection, risk- stratification, and screening of lung, colon, pancreatic, ovarian, prostate and esophageal neoplasms, and development of highly effective non-toxic cancer therapeutics targeting chromatin alterations in cancer cells. From the basic science perspective, the focus is on understanding the origin of cellular transcriptional memory and physical mechanisms regulating genomic events, particularly in early carcinogenesis, cellular response to injury, and aging.
Backman’s ongoing work is focused on physical genomics, studying the relationship between the nanoscale structure of the genome, global patterns of gene expression, and cellular transcriptional memory, which could have widespread impact in treating diseases such as aging, cancer and Alzheimer’s, and in regenerative therapies for strokes and heart attacks, among other applications.
Dr. Backman is deeply committed to research and training outcomes. His lab employs multiple tools for developing excellence in experimental design and analysis as well as professional development.
He received an MS in Physics from MIT and a PhD in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from Harvard University and MIT.