After an idyllic childhood and youth on the lakesides of Minnesota, Adam Markowicz combined an interest in physics with a personal mission to make cancer treatment easier for patients in his pursuit of a Ph.D. in bioengineering.

When he’s not working in the lab, he enjoys mountain biking and reading. While he’s contemplating a possible career in industry after the completion of his degree, he looks forward to spending time among the many church towers of Lübeck, Germany, during an academic exchange. 

Where are you from? Tell us a bit about yourself. 

I'm from Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes. I grew up on a lake just outside of Minneapolis and I love the outdoors! I went to the University of Minnesota to study physics, and after that, I wanted to do something more applied. I took a gap year to figure out what that would be. As it turns out, I got interested in medical imaging and medical physics. I liked making and seeing pretty pictures, honestly. I ended up interested in microscopes, and that's what I work on now.

How long have you been here at the University of Illinois?

This is my fourth year. I work with Stephen Boppart in the Biophotonics Imaging Lab.

What is your research on?

I’m involved in a few projects, but I work on something called optical coherence tomography, which is a fancy name. It’s like ultrasound, but instead of using sound I use light. I use it for imaging different types of tissues. For example, there's this big project where we're trying to use OCT and other imaging modalities to find cancer margins. The reason is important for me. 

Someone close to me had cancer, and the doctors at the Mayo Clinic were unable to remove the cancerous tumor in its entirety during the surgery. That means that this person I care about had to go back for a second surgery. The goal for the project I'm working on is to build a special microscope so that surgeons can see more clearly where all the cancer is while operating. They can remove it all and won’t have to re-operate. 

You were inspired by this experience to pursue this research?

Yeah, it’s a personal element to my research. I also work on bacteria. That kind of imaging involves infections in the body, but specifically biofilms. Biofilms are these bacteria that form and work together, like a school of fish. By using OCT on biofilms, I can learn how to classify what type of bacteria are present and look at it all more closely. Sometimes we want to remove the bacteria, like on a filthy sink in the bathroom. It's nasty!

What do you gain from working at the Beckman Institute?

I was told that Beckman was designed to force people to intermingle, so everyone has to meet at those central staircases — not staircases, elevators! Those elevators make it difficult when I want to exercise by taking the stairs. I often see people from different labs in them, who I know from class. I'll catch up and hear what they work on. Once someone wanted to image something when I ran into them, and we quickly went and imaged in the lab.

I like that, and the fact that all the labs are on one side, all the offices are on the other and there's choke points that everyone goes through. That's what I like about Beckman. It's nice and aesthetically pleasing!

I enjoy the Beckman Institute Open House, too. It gives me perspective on where I am, as a scientist. Most of the time I’m surrounded by researchers, but at the open house I get to talk with kids. It’s cool because being a researcher isn't easy sometimes. Seeing young people’s enthusiasm about science is fun.

What’s in store for you in the near future?

The university has a Technology Entrepreneurship Center that offers graduate certificates in management, and I’ve taken some classes.

There’s also the Cozad New Venture Challenge. I'm participating in that with my twin sister, who's doing a Ph.D. here too and another labmate. In my lab, we always talk about clinical translation, going from benchtop to bedside. It's a nice slogan, but the reality is, we can create the coolest medical devices that would really help people, but unless we make a product that people can buy, it probably won’t be widely used.

That’s why I’m interested in this startup stuff. It’s a long shot, though. Generally, I’m interested in the translation of academic knowledge into actual products, so maybe working at a big medical device company would be more feasible rather than starting my own company.

Any interesting scholarly opportunities coming up? 

Well, I've always wanted to study abroad. There's a German funding agency called the German Academic Exchange Service, or Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and I just won an award, a bi-nationally supervised doctorate. Over the next two years, I’ll go back and forth to work on research there and here. The professor I’m working with is the inventor of a laser called the Fourier domain mode lock laser, which I use in my work. It's exciting that I can go there and potentially make a new laser I can bring to my lab here.

What do you do when you’re not in the lab?

I’ve always been into biking, and I mountain biked competitively in high school and did a few races in college, and then — I came here. There are fewer opportunities for that, but Kickapoo is nice. One thing I miss about Minnesota is that it’s more outdoorsy than here. Sometimes I'll travel to a park, or Garden of the Gods down south or Turkey Run just to spend time outside. 

I also like to read, usually nonfiction, but sometimes I challenge myself to read fiction! I went through a period where I read autobiographies like Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime,” Michelle Obama's “Becoming” and things like that. Now I've been drifting a little bit more into political philosophy. One of my friends just gave me a book that I haven’t had time to read yet, “The Accidental Death of an Anarchist.”