Dr. Nozomi Nishimura is an Associate Professor in the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University and develops optical tools for studying in vivo cell behaviors in disease. Her PhD is in physics from the University of California at San Diego with Prof. David Kleinfeld where she studied blood flow in the brain of rodents and developing laser-based models of small stroke. She came to Biomedical Engineering at Cornell in 2006 to do a postdoc with Prof. Chris Schaffer and later joined the faculty in 2013. To study the complex actions of cells in vivo, her lab develops intravital multiphoton microscopy imaging methods that reveal how cells function, move and interact. Injury triggers the recruitment and activation of many immune and inflammatory cell types that, together with the local cells, determine the course of the disease progression. The goal is to develop methods to visualize all of these cells at once and quantify cell actions and function. She applies these tools in many systems, but has particular interests in studying the effects of microvascular dysfunction in the brain. Her lab studies the role of microvascular occlusions in Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration. These methods were recently adapted for the beating mouse heart providing new capabilities to study single cell function and cardiac microvasculature. Recent work expanding into the intestine revealed novel behaviors such as motion and force actuation by stem cells in response to injury.