Medical Biophysics and Radiation Oncology, University of Toronto
610 University Ave, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5G 2M9
Phone: (416) 946-2990
Fax: (416) 946-6529
Dr. Alex Vitkin is an engineering physicist/biomedical engineer by training, with further specialization in medical physics and applications of lasers in medicine. He is currently a professor of Medical Biophysics and Radiation Oncology at the University of Toronto, a senior scientist in the division of Biophysics and Bioimaging at the Ontario Cancer Institute, and a clinical medical physicist at Princess Margaret Hospital (all in Toronto, Ontario, Canada). His research is the field of biophotonics, with particular emphasis on Doppler optical coherence tomography, tissue polarimetry, and optical fiber sensors. He has published over 70 papers and book chapters on diagnostic and therapeutic uses of light in biomedicine, holds several patents in the field, and currently runs a large laboratory with several undergraduate/graduate students and post-doctoral/clinical fellows. His laboratory works closely with clinicians and with industry, and he is a consultant for several biophotonics companies. He has served as a session chair and program organizer for various conferences in biomedical optics, such as Photonics North (Quebec City, Canada), Canadian Association of Physicists (Charlottetown, Canada), Bio-thermo-acoustics in Medicine (Denver, USA), Laser Applications in Life Sciences (Moscow, Russia), and European Biomedical Optics Conference (Munich, Germany). Dr. Vitkin is a frequent research grant reviewer/panelist/site visitor for National Institutes of Health (NIH), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Centre for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technologies (CIMIT), and several other research granting agencies. He has been a Guest Editor for the Optics and Photonics News special issue on Biophotonics, a Guest Editor for the Journal of Applied Physics special issue on Applied Biophysics, and currently serves on the editorial board of Optics Letters. He has lectured widely at conferences at the national and international levels, including delivering special summer school modules on biophotonics in Mexico, Brazil, and Russia. Dr. Vitkin is also a board-certified medical physicist through the Canadian College of Physicists in Medicine (CCPM).