Oesophageal cancer has a very low 5-year survival rate because it is hard to detect early enough to treat. By using additional properties of light that are discarded by conventional endoscopes, in particular optical phase and polarisation, we can more clearly see the micro-structural tissue changes present in early-stage cancer. I am building an endoscope that measures properties of coherent light in order to enable physicians to identify oesophageal cancer earlier.
Brief CV
Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical), University of Auckland (2005-2008)
Ph.D. in Telecommunications Engineering, University of Cambridge (2009-2013)
Henslow Research Fellow, Dept. of Engineering and St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge (2013-2016)
Postdoctoral research associate with Dr Sarah Bohndiek, Dept. of Engineering and Dept. of Physics, University of Cambridge (2016-2019)
Next destination: Assistant Professor, University of Nottingham, UK
G S D Gordon, F Feng, Q Kang, Y Jung, J Sahu and T Wilkinson (2014). Optics Letters 39 (20), 6034-6037.
In this paper I made a phase and polarisation sensitive camera using a single pixel detector. The camera has extremely high sensitivity at 1550nm, where normal silicon sensors don't work, so could be useful for telecomms or imaging in the NIR.
A Kaczorowski, G S D Gordon, A Palani, S Czerniawski and T D Wilkinson (2015). IEEE/OSA Journal of Display Technology, 11 (7).
In this paper, a colleague and I developed a novel method of adaptively correcting aberrations to make high quality Fourier projectors using low-cost components such as ball-lenses. The algorithm first maps the aberrations to a sparse basis and then uses a hybrid genetic-steepest descent optimisation algorithm to empirically determine the global optimum.
J Xu, G S D Gordon, T D Wilkinson, and C. Peucheret (2015) in Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), San Jose, CA.
In a collaboration with DTU, we performed the first experimental measurement of non-linear mode coupling. That is, by using high-power lasers we were able to modulate the refractive index of glass to shift light between spatial modes in a few-mode fibre. This could potentially have uses in future all-optical switches for high-speed telecommunication networks
Conference Highlights
IEEE Photonics Society Summer Topicals – because it was in Hawaii. Highlights included the swimming pool with turtles, the swimming pool with dolphins, and the non-swimming pool with sharks. The conference itself was very interesting: an added bonus.