Dr. Joshua Pfefer

Biomedical Research Engineer
Food and Drug Administration

Bio

Dr. Joshua Pfefer received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999, where he performed research on laser ablation, computational modeling and optical-thermal light-tissue interactions relevant to urology and dermatology. He then spent a postdoctoral year at Harvard Medical School performing research at Massachusetts General Hospital on endoscopic detection of gastrointestinal cancers with laser-induced-fluorescence.

In 2000, he joined FDA where he is currently a Biomedical Research Engineer and leads the Optical Spectroscopy and Spectral Imaging program.  His group has performed Regulatory Science research on a wide variety of topics in Biomedical Optics, including Optical Coherence Tomography, Photoacoustic Imaging, Thermography, Fluorescence imaging and Oximetry.  Currently, his lab’s efforts are focused on phantom-based test methods and the effect of skin pigmentation on optical device performance.  Dr. Pfefer has published a total of over 90 journal articles and book chapters, and in 2018 he was named a Fellow of SPIE for contributions to Biophotonics.