Prof. Dr. Samuel Achilefu is the inventor of the high-tech infrared goggles which enable Doctors to see cancer cells during surgery.
The goggles, have proven useful in helping to ensure that no tumour, which appears as a blue light glows have helped in the removal of hitherto unspotted cells.
Prof Achilefu, who owns 59 patents in USA, Samuel Achilefu is a Nigerian-born scientist and medical researcher who has pioneered both fundamental and applied research in science, engineering, and medicine.
Dr. Samuel Achilefu is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he holds the Lyda Hill Distinguished University Chair in Biomedical Engineering.
He is also Professor of Radiology and a member of the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center. Before joining UT Southwestern, he was the Michel M. Ter-Pogossian Professor of Radiology and Vice Chair for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine. He held joint appointments as a professor of medicine, biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and biomedical engineering.
He also served as the Director of the Washington University Molecular Imaging Center and the privately funded Theranostic Innovation Program and was co-director of the Center for Multiple Myeloma Nanotherapy and co-Leader of the Oncologic Imaging Program of the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University.
Achilefu is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors as well as many professional societies, including the Royal Society of Chemistry, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Optical Society of America, the International Society for Optics and Photonics Engineers (SPIE), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the St. Louis Academy of Science.
Dr. Achilefu, a former trustee of Loma Linda University in California, earned his PhD from the University of Nancy in France as a French Government Scholar and his postdoctoral training at Oxford University in England.
He was recruited from Oxford to St. Louis to work for Mallinckrodt Medical in 1993 and joined the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University in 2001, where he established the more than 80-member Optical Radiology program at the School of Medicine.
