Christine P. Hendon
About Optica
Christine P. Hendon
Columbia University
Awards & Distinctions
- Fellow - 2021
Christine Hendon is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Vice Dean of Diversity and Strategic Partnerships within the Engineering School at Columbia University. Christine received a BS degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2004 and the MS and PhD degrees from Case Western Reserve University in Biomedical Engineering in 2007 and 2010, respectively. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 2012. She joined Columbia University in 2012. At Columbia, Hendon teaches Optical Systems and Digital Image Processing to a diverse student population, including Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, Applied Physics, and Mechanical Engineering students. Hendon is also the director of the Structure Function Imaging Laboratory. Her research contributions have been developing optical systems and processing methods for enabling the extraction of architectural information and the identification of structural substrates within tissue.
The Structure-Function Imaging Laboratory has made several contributions toward the characterization of the human myocardium with optical coherence tomography and monitoring of ablation therapy with near-infrared spectroscopy. Hendon utilizes optical methods to address significant unmet clinical needs in cardiac electrophysiology. She has developed integrated OCT, NIRS, and ablation probes for real-time assessment of interventional procedures, along with processing tools for measuring lesion depth, monitoring, and generating substrate maps for procedural guidance. Hendon's recent research efforts are towards using optical coherence tomography and near-infrared spectroscopy to address unmet needs in women's health, with an emphasis on breast and uterine cancer.
She has received recognition for her work from Forbes' 30 under 30 in Science and Healthcare (2012), MIT Technology Review's 35 under 35 Innovators (2013), NIH New Innovator Award (2014), NSF CAREER Award (2015), and Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (2017). Prof. Hendon is a fellow of Optica, SPIE, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AMBIE).
