Mark Pierce, PhD, will join the Biomedical Engineering Department starting September 2011. He received his PhD from the University of Manchester, UK in 2001, where his research focused on the interaction of mid-infrared lasers and biological tissues. He then joined Harvard Medical School as a post-doc, working on the development and clinical application of optical coherence tomography systems for ophthalmology, dermatology and cardiovascular imaging. In 2005 he joined the research faculty in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University, where he focused on the design and clinical translation of imaging systems for applications in cancer management. He has authored or co-authored over 30 journal papers and 60 conference proceedings, and he is PI or co-PI on grants from the NIH and Gates Foundation.