Ekaterina Borisova - 2016-17 SPIE Women in Optics Planner
Associate Professor; Scientific Secretary of IE-BAS; Lead Researcher for Biophotonics Lab, Institute of Electronics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
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Country of Birth: Russia Country of Residence: Bulgaria Educational Background: PhD, Institute of Electronics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; MS, Medical Physics, MS, Laser Physics, Sofia University, Bulgaria; Physics Degree, Sofia Mathematical High School |
When I was a child, I read a lot of books, including huge sets of natural sciences and other popular scientific literature. In that period I realized that physics is the science that could explain everything in the world - all magical phenomena and beauty of the nature around us.
I work on development of optical systems for spectral diagnostics of skin and gastrointestinal tumors. We use fluorescence and diffuse-reflectance spectroscopy modalities to measure their properties and develop novel equipment, optimized for diagnostics of such pathologies. We evaluate optical properties of different types of malignant tumors, compare them with the properties of benign and dysplastic lesions, and develop a database where we could compare every new case investigated with the existing ones. We detect optically different diagnostically-important biochemical and morphological information, which we give to the clinicians, who decide after that what to do for the exact case and how to therapeutically treat the patient.
If you love your work, if you are interested and passionate about your topic of research, everything else will come with time. I am happy to work in the field of Biophotonics.
It is extremely interesting to work in natural sciences, technology and engineering – it does not matter if you are man or woman, the challenges are the same. Follow your own way, if you feel that a STEM career is the one you want to do. It is a magic world of science and technology with so many opportunities for career growth, for fruitful and useful work, which could give you a lot of inspiration and satisfaction.