Babak Shadgan
Wall Associate
Dr. Babak Shadgan is a MSFHR Scholar, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of British Columbia (UBC), a faculty member at the UBC School of Biomedical Engineering and a principal investigator at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD), where he is directing the Clinical Biophotonics Laboratory. He is a medical doctor specialized in Sports and Exercise Medicine, graduated from the Queen Mary College of the University of London, with a PhD in Experimental Medicine from UBC. He completed a fellowship on NIRS-Diffused Optical Tomography at Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging of Harvard University. His post-doctoral fellowship at UBC was focused on remote optical monitoring of muscle dysfunction in people with spinal cord injury. With more than two decades of medical practice and research, he has developed a specific knowledge in clinical biophotonics with a unique integrated transitional bedside- to-bench and bench-to-bedside approach. Dr. Shadgan is a senior member, an instructor, and a conference chair at the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). He is an advocator of multidisciplinary networking and collaborations between biomedical engineering and clinical scientists for innovative and applied technology development in medicine. As an international level sports physician, leading Medical & Anti-Doping Commission of the International Olympic Styles Wrestling, Dr. Shadgan has been serving elite athletes at world championships and Olympic Games since 2002. He is currently involved in special preparation of 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games under the COVID-19 situation. Dr. Shadgan is also actively working on design and development of novel wearable biosensors and their applications in sports and exercise medicine.
Primary Recipient Awards
Senior people living in long-term care facilities are among high-risk individuals with the highest rate of mortality when affected by COVID-19. A non-invasive, rapid and sensitive method for regular screening allows early detection of the high-risk individuals infected with COVID-19 helping to reduce the rate of viral transmission in long-term care facilities. Moreover, data indicate better outcomes when treatment protocols start earlier. We aim to develop and test a novel, non-invasive, sensitive and accurate biosensing device and a simple-to-operate method for regular screening and early diagnosis of patients who are affected by COVID-19 in long-term care facilities. Prof. Andrew Macnab, Dr. Jordan Guenette, Dr. Kevin Afra, Dr. Eric Sayre, Dr. Reza Alemi and Dr. Amir Gandjbakhche are key collaborators in this multidisciplinary project.
September 2022
Link to publication in Sensors
Dr. Babak and his team demonstrated that a wearable NIRS sensor can monitor respiratory patterns continuously and non-invasively, and distinguish between normal and simulated breathing symptoms commonly seen in individuals with pneumonia. Future studies can expand on these results by collecting respiratory signals from individuals with other respiratory diseases or patients admitted to the hospital with COVID-19.
