MITRA, Kunal

Kunal MITRA}

Contact Information

Professor
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
College of Engineering
F.W. Olin Engineering, 247
Phone: 7131
Email: kmitra@fit.edu

Web & Social Networking

College of Engineering

Research & Project Interests

Dr. Mitra’s research interests include the interaction of short pulse lasers with scattering absorbing media such as tissues, ocean water and clouds for non-invasive detection. The applications include optical tomography for detection of tumors in tissues, detection of schools of fish and landmines in ocean water, detection of defects in materials such as debonding in thermal protection tiles, and remote sensing of lightning through clouds. Dr. Mitra also uses ultra-short pulse lasers for minimally invasive therapeutic applications such as ablation of tumors, non-thermal dental ablation, and intrastromal refractive surgery. Dr. Mitra is also working on the design of fiber-optic based nano-probes for precise delivery of laser light and for probing desired cellular organelles and study the mechanism of light interaction during low-level laser irradiations of tissues. The numerical aspect of the research interests include solution of transient radiative transport equation for analyzing short pulse laser transport through participating media and development of hyperbolic heat conduction models for determining the temperature distribution in laser irradiated tissue with blood perfusion.

Dr. Mitra has also interest in various energy systems and applications such as study of efficiency of solar collectors & PV systems, and development of nanomaterial polymer based light weight high-efficiency photovoltaic cells.

Dr. Mitra has a patent (US Patent # 6,847,700) related to the short pulse x-ray irradiation technology for therapeutic applications. He also has a patent pending (US 2007/0232931 A1) dealing with a time-resolved optical tomography system using short pulse laser for cancer diagnostics.

Keywords

Biomedical Imaging
Short Pulse Lasers
Radiation Transport
Nanobiosensors
Ablation
Conduction
X-Ray Radiation
Photovoltaic
Energy Systems

Professor
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering

Personal Overview

Fellow, American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Fellow, American Society of Laser Medicine and Surgery

American Society of Mechanical Engineers- K6 Committee on Heat Transfer in Energy Systems; K17 Committee on Heat & Mass Transfer in Biotechnology

Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers

Optical Society of America

Tau Beta Pi (Engineering Honor Society)

Educational Background

B.S. Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India 1991
M.S. Polytechnic Institute of New York University 1993
Ph.D. Polytechnic Institute of New York University 1996

Professional Experience

Professor, Florida Institute of Technology, 05/08 – Present

Program Chair, Biomedical Engineering Program, 08/08 – Present

Associate Professor, Florida Institute of Technology, 05/02 – 04/08

Assistant Professor, Florida Institute of Technology, 08/97 – 04/02

Director, Laser, Optics, and Instrumentation Laboratory, Florida Institute of Technology, 08/00 - present

Graduate Council Representative, 08/00 - present

Research Associate, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1996-1997

Research Staff, Polytechnic University, 1996

Current Research

Optical tomography system using short pulse laser for early lung cancer detection (Florida Department of Health and Florida Photonics Center of Excellence)

Tumor ablation using short pulse laser (Raydiance Inc. and U.S. Food and Drug Administration)

Non-thermal dental ablation using ultra-short pulsed laser (Raydiance Inc.)

Cellular interrogation using fiberoptic nanobiosensors (National Science Foundation and Florida Space Grant Consortium)

Study of optical tomography for biomedical imaging of tissues using short pulse lasers (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Transient radiative transfer modeling and experiments with short pulse lasers (NSF/Sandia National Laboratory)

Non-destructive detection of thermal tile systems debonding using short pulse laser (Florida Space Grant Consortium-NASA)

Landmine detection in shallow water using pulsed laser (Northrop Grumman)

Temperature dependent optical properties of thin films (Florida Solar Energy Center)

Nanomaterial polymer based light weight high efficiency photovoltaic cells (Solar Flex, Inc & Florida Space Grant Consortium)

Novel auxiliary mirror drive mechanism for photovoltaic cells (Florida Solar Energy Center)

Design and develop new experiments to update and expand the departmentÂ’s Heat Transfer Laboratory

Selected Publications

Sajjadi, A., Mitra, K., and Grace, M. 2011. Ablation of Subsurface Tumors Using an Ultra-Short Pulse Laser. Optics and Lasers in Engineering. 49(3): 451-456.

 Muthukumaran, R., Mishra, S., and Mitra, K. 2011. Assessment of Signals Resulting from A Human Tissue Phantom Subjected to Radiation Sources of Temporal Spans of the Order of A Nano-, a Pico- and a Femto-Second – A numerical Study. Numerical Heat Transfer Part A 60: 1-17.

Jaunich, M.K., Raje, S., Kim, K., Mitra, K., and Guo, Z. 2008. Bio-heat Transfer Analysis during Short Pulse Laser Irradiation of Tissues. Special Issue of International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 51: 5511-5521.

Fahey, M., Mitra, K., Onyejekwe, O., and Mason, H.L. 2008. Precise Dental Ablation Using Ultra-Short Pulsed 1552 nm Laser. Special Issue of International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 51: 5732-5739.

Pal, G., Dutta, A., Mitra, K., Grace, M., Amat, A., Romanczk, T., Wu, X., Chakrabarti, K., and Anders, J., Gorman, E., Waynant, R.W., Tata, D. 2007. Effect of Low Intensity Laser Interaction with a Human Skin Fibroblast Cell using Fiber-Optic Nano-Probes. Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology 86: 252-261.

Pal, G., Basu, S., Mitra, K., and Vo-Dinh, T. 2006. Time-resolved Optical Tomography System Using Short Pulse Laser for Detection of Tumors in Tissues. Applied Optics 45 (24):6270-6282.

Mishra, S.C., Chugh, P., Kumar, P., and Mitra, K. 2006. Development and Comparison of the DTM, the DOM and the FVM Formulations for the Short-Pulse Laser Transport through a Participating Medium. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 49:1820-1832.

Banerjee, A., Ogale, A., and Mitra, K . 2006. Experimental Simulation of Lightning Optical Emissions in Clouds. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 39: 575-583.

Banerjee, A., Ogale, A., Mitra, K., and C.S. Subramanian. 2005. Temperature Distribution in Different Materials Due to Short Pulse Laser Irradiation. Heat Transfer Engineering 26 (8):56-65.

Trivedi, A., Basu, S., and Mitra, K. 2005. Temporal Analysis of Reflected Optical Signals for Short Pulse Laser Interaction with Nonhomogeneous Tissue Phantoms. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer 93:337-348.

Das, C., Trivedi, A., Mitra, K. and Vo-Dinh, T. 2003. Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Short Pulse Laser Interaction with Tissue Phantoms containing Inhomogeneities. Applied Optics 42 (25):5173-5180.

Rath, P., Mishra, S.C., Mahanta, P., Saha, U.K., and Mitra, K. 2003. Discrete Transfer Method Applied to Transient Radiative Transfer Problems in Participating Medium. Numerical Heat Transfer, Part A: Applications 44:183-197.

Sakami, M., Mitra, K., and Vo-Dinh, T. 2002. Analysis of Short-Pulse Laser Photon Transport through Tissues for Optical Tomography. Optics Letters 27 (5):336-338.

Sakami, M., Mitra, K., and Hsu, P. 2002. Analysis of Light-Pulse Transport Through Two-Dimensional Scattering-Absorbing Media. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer 73:169-179.

George, S. and Mitra, K. 2001. Analysis of Ablation Characteristics of Absorbing Dielectrics Due to Short Laser Pulses. AIAA Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer 15 (2):190-196.

Kumar, S. and Mitra, K. 1999. Micro-scale Aspects of Thermal Radiation Transport and Laser Applications. Invited paper in Advances in Heat Transfer 33:187-294.

Mitra, K. and Churnside, J.H. 1999. Transient Radiative Transfer Equation Applied to Oceanographic Lidar. Applied Optics 38 (6):889-895.

Mitra, K. and Kumar, S. 1999. Development and Comparison of Models for Light Pulse Transport through Scattering Absorbing Media. Applied Optics 38 (1):188-196.