Prof. Haishan Zeng

Dr. Haishan Zeng is a distinguished scientist with the Integrative Oncology Department (Imaging Unit) of the BC Cancer Research Institute and a professor of Dermatology, Pathology, and Physics at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Dr. Zeng received a B.Sc. degree on electronic physics from Peking University and a Ph.D. degree on biophysics from UBC. For over 30 years, Dr. Zeng’s research has been focused on the optical properties of biological tissues, light-tissue interaction, nanomaterials enhanced light-tissue interaction, as well as their applications in medical diagnosis and therapy. His group has pioneered the multiphoton absorption based laser therapy and is at the leading position in Raman spectroscopy and endoscopy imaging for in vivo early cancer detection, and silver/gold nanoparticles based surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy analysis of body fluids for cancer screening. He has published over 200 refereed journal papers, 18 book chapters, and 1 book (“Diagnostic Endoscopy”, CRC Press Series in Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering). Dr. Zeng serves as Editorial Board members for the Journal of Biomedical Optics and the recently launched Translational Biophotonics. He is co-chair of the Photonics in Dermatology and Plastic Surgery Conference of the annual SPIE International Symposium on Biomedical Optics.

Dr. Zeng’s research has generated 31 granted patents related to optical diagnosis and therapy. Several medical devices have been successfully developed from these patents including fluorescence endoscopy (ONCO-LIFE™) and rapid Raman spectroscopy (Vita Imaging Aura™). The Aura™ device using Raman spectroscopy for non-invasive skin cancer detection was awarded the Prism Award in the Life Sciences and Biophotonics category in 2013 by SPIE.