Kripa Patel

Kripa Patel has a diverse work experience in the fields of optical engineering and biomedical research. In 2021, they began working as a Sr Optical Engineer at Avegant and as a Mixed Reality PhD Research Intern at Microsoft. From 2014-2021, they were a Doctoral Researcher at Columbia University in the City of New York, where they initiated and led the development of a 3D imaging technique, SCAPE microscopy, for real-time, label-free surgical guidance. Kripa also served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the BME Imaging Module. In 2013, they worked as a Staff Research Technician at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where they helped demonstrate the first-ever use of confocal Brilluoin Microscopy for high resolution, three-dimensional mechanical imaging of cells. From 2012-2013, they were a Research Assistant at both the Boston University Biomedical Optics Lab and CERN, where they developed a system to assess cancer cell morphology using elastically scattered light and wrote and optimized portions of the custom Matlab code used for collecting and analyzing image data. In 2010, they worked as a Research Assistant at the Boston University Cancer Research Center, where they won UROP funding for a project focusing on the deregulation of certain microRNAs in the growth of human leukemia cells and published a first-author peer-reviewed journal article about the downregulation of microRNA let-7 in pancreatic cancers. Kripa also worked as a Chemistry Intern at Bio-concept Laboratories in 2010.

Kripa Patel began their educational journey at Salem High School in Salem, NH, graduating in 2009. Kripa then attended Boston University, earning a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and a B.A. in Physics in 2013. In 2014, they began their Master's degree in Biomedical/Medical Engineering at Columbia University, which they completed in 2016. Kripa then continued their studies at Columbia University, earning their Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Biomedical/Medical Engineering in 2021.