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UB Expert

Paras N. Prasad

Expertise:

• Optics and spectroscopy
• Photonics and biophotonics
• Materials science

An internationally recoginzed chemist, Prasad founded and directs UB's Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics. In collaboration with the U.S. Air Force Wright Laboratory, UB and Roswell Park Cancer Institute researchers, he has developed a new generation of organic, photonic materials that strongly demonstrate a phenomenon called multiphoton absorption. The new materials make possible better photodynamic cancer therapy, compacts discs (CDs) that pack a thousand times more data than current ones and the ability to use a confocal microscope to see, for the first time, thick samples in three dimensions. Also developed inexpensive, photorefractive polymers that surpass performance of costly conventional materials. Winner of a 1997 Guggenheim Fellowship Award. Fellow in the Optical Society of America. Chairs international conference on polymers.