Anita Mahadevan-Jansen

As a child Mahadevan-Jansen wanted to be a medical doctor.[3] She studied physics at the University of Mumbai, and earned her Bachelor's and master's degree there in 1990.[3] As an undergraduate student she was disinterested in optics.[4] Her professor, S.B. Patel, proposed that she applied to work in biomedical engineering.[3][4] She moved to the University of Texas at Austin for her doctoral studies, where she completed a Master's and PhD in 1996.[5][6] There, she began working with fluorescence spectroscopy under the supervision of Rebecca Richards-Kortum.[3]

Mahadevan-Jansen joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University in 1996 and is currently Orrin H. Ingram Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Neurological Surgery.[7] She founded the Vanderbilt Biophotonics Center, where she works on optical diagnostics, surgical guidance, and neurophotonics.[8][9] She is interested in translating optical technologies into in vivo diagnostic tools.[10] Mahadevan-Jansen pioneered the use of in vivo Raman spectroscopy for non-invasive diagnostics cervical dysplasia.[11] Her methodology is being developed for use in clinical medicine, for example, it may be used by surgeons in the treatment of breast and brain cancer.[12] She created optical blood testing methodologies for neonatal babies, which was selected by the Vanderbilt University Center for Technology Transfer as one of the "coolest inventions" of the year.[13] She developed sensors that can detect inflammation caused by bowel disease into a typical colonoscopy procedure.[14]

In 2005, Dr. Mahadevan-Jansen and collaborators (including her husband, Dr. E Duco Jansen[15]) discovered the ability to control peripheral and central nervous system electrical activity label-free with short pulses of infrared light.[16] Termed infrared neural stimulation (INS), the field of label-free neuromodulation has evolved over the last decade built on these initial findings.[17] This technology has demonstrated as safe and clinically translatable in humans.[18]

In 2014, Mahadevan-Jansen was elected as conference co-chair to the 2018 Gordon Research Conference on Lasers in Medicine Biology with Paul French. She is exploring the use of Raman spectroscopy for investigating pre-term cervical remodeling.[11] In 2018, 10 years after Mahadevan-Jensen demonstrated that parathyroid gland tissues glow under near-infrared light, the Food and Drug Administration approved that the technology could be used for surgeries.[19][20] Her technology, the PTeye, was tested in a 81 patient clinical trial, and enables in situ monitoring of the parathyroid tissue during thyroid surgery.[19] Before Mahadevan-Jansen's technology, surgeons relied on a visual assessment to identify the location of the parathyroid gland.[19] She is also working on a development of Raman spectroscopy for the early diagnosis of throat cancer related to HPV.[21] She leads a $3 million Vanderbilt University program that develops microscopy tools.[12] Both projects are part of the Trans-Institutional Programs (TIPs) program at Vanderbilt University.[21]

Since 1995, Mahadevan-Jansen is listed as co-inventor on more than 20 USPTO patents, several of which being licensed towards commercial development.[22]

Mahadevan-Jansen is married to Duco Jansen, a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University.[3] Together they have two children.[32]