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Dr. Ramachandra R. Dasari

Associate Director,
G.R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rm. 6-014, 77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA
617-943-8418 (Tel); 617-253-4513 (fax)
rrdasari@mit.edu

Biographical Sketch:

Ramachandra Rao Dasari was born in India in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh. He had all his education in India receiving B.Sc. in 1954 from Andhra University, M.Sc. in 1956 from Benares Hindu University and Ph.D. in 1960 from Aligarh Muslim University. He joined the faculty of the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1962 and became a full professor in 1973. During this period, he spent two years at MIT (1966-68) as a visiting scientist and gained valuable experience in the fabrication of lasers and research in laser physics. He left IIT Kanpur in 1978 and spent a year as a visiting Senior Research Officer at the National Research Council of Canada, Ottawa (1978-79), and another year as a visiting scientist at the Department of Physics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver (1979-80) before coming to MIT in 1980.

Dr. Dasari’s major accomplishments at IIT, Kanpur include building one of the largest Laser laboratories for university research in India,(many lasers were actually built at IIT Kanpur) training large number of Ph.D students in laser research and interactions with R&D laboratories such as Central Electronics Ltd, New Delhi, and Bharat Heavy Electricals, Hyderabad for laser technology based instrumentation. As Physics panel member of UGC, he has initiated number of new initiatives for improvements in undergraduate education and organized workshops for training of teachers.

AT MIT, Dr. Dasari was a visiting Professor of Physics for a year in 1980. He has been a Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Spectroscopy Laboratory since 1981. He was appointed as an Assistant Director of the Spectroscopy Laboratory in 1984 and later was promoted to Associate Director in 1992. He oversees project coordination and facility developments of the MIT Laser Biomedical Research Center, supported by the National Institutes of Health, and also coordinate research programs associated with the NSF Supported Laser Research Facility.

He has given numerous lectures at universities in the U.S.A., Canada, and India and participated in several international conferences. Under his supervision, twelve students have received Ph.D.degrees and several students received M.S./M.Tech degrees.

Dr. Dasari’s research publications numbering more than 250 in refereed journals which include Physical Rev. Letters, Physical Review, Nature, Optics Letters, Applied Optics, Journal of Quantum Electronics, Applied Spectroscopy, , Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, Cancer Research, Gastro Enterology, etc.

His early research cover areas of high resolution spectroscopy of simple molecules, vibrational-rotational relaxations in infrared, laser frequency measurements in the far-infrared, laser spectroscopy of rare-earth ions in single crystals, Dicke narrowing in infrared transitions, multiphoton ionizations, laser nuclear studies, molecular collisions and dynamics, Single Atom Laser

Over the last 10 years, his major research activities moved to laser biomedical studies leading to spectral diagnosis of disease using several techniques, scattering, reflectance, fluorescence, and Raman spectroscopy Specifically, detection of early stages of cancer in several organs of the body including breast, colon, bladder, esophagus, uterine cervix, and oral cavity was the major theme of research. Also he was involved in the extensive studies that were conducted in vitro and in some cases in vivo related to atherosclerosis in coronary, femoral and carotid arteries. His other research relates to low coherence interferometry for detection of nanometer motions in cells and neurons.

Publications, 2000–2010