Vibrational Spectroscopy in Protein Research From Purified Proteins to Aggregates and Assemblies

Dr. Ozaki received his B.Sc. in Chemistry in 1973 and PhD in Physical and Inorganic Chemistry in 1978, both from Osaka University. After over two years at the National Research Council of Canada as a research associate, he joined Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo. In 1989, he became associate professor and later full professor in the Chemistry Department at Kwansei Gakuin University until March 2018. He was a Vice President of Kwansei Gakuin University from April 2013 to March 2018. Currently Professor Ozaki is a professor emeritus of Kwansei Gakuin University. Ozaki has received many awards, including the 1998 Tomas Hirschfeld Award, 2001 EAS Award for Achievements in Near Infrared Spectroscopy, 2002 Spectroscopical Society of Japan Award, 2005 Science and Technology Award of Japanese Government, 2008 Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry Award, 2014 Bomem-Michelson Award, 2017 Chemical Society of Japan Award, and the 2018 Medal with Purple Ribbon.

Dr. Malgorzata Baranska leads the Raman Imaging Group at The Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. In her research, Dr. Baranska focuses on analyzing bioactive compounds using spectroscopic methods, particularly modern Raman techniques. The main direction of her research is related to development treatments for life style diseases, including new drugs of endothelium bioactivity.

Dr. Igor Lednev received his PhD degree from The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russian Federation before joining the University of Albany as faculty. As an academic visitor, he worked in several leading laboratories around the world including the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and Germany. Dr. Lednev’s current research is focused on the development and application of novel laser spectroscopy for biomedical and forensic applications.

Dr. Bayden R. Wood is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow working at the Centre for Biospectroscopy located in the School of Chemistry, Monash University, Malborne, Australia. His research is concerned primarily with vibrational spectroscopy of tissues, cells, and biomolecules, and monitoring home aggregation in single living red blood cells associated with erythrocyte disorders, including malaria and sickle cell disease, using resonance Raman spectroscopy.