David A. Boas, PhD
Professor
Boston University College of Engineering
Biomedical Engineering

PhD, University of Pennsylvania
BS, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute



David Boas, Ph.D. (Professor, Biomedical Engineering) is Director of the Neurophotonics Center at Boston University. He received his BS in Physics at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute and PhD in Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. During his academic career, he has supervised 44 students and post-doctoral fellows, and he has published over 250 papers that have received over 30,000 citations and an h-index of 101. He is the founding President of the Society for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy and founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neurophotonics published by SPIE. Dr. Boas was awarded the Britton Chance Award in Biomedical Optics in 2016 for his development of several novel, high-impact biomedical optical technologies in the neurosciences, as well as following through with impactful application studies, and fostering the widespread adoption of these technologies. He was elected a Fellow of AIMBE, SPIE, and OSA in 2017.

As Director of the Neurophotonics Center, he facilitates the development and application of novel optical methods to address a broad range of neuroscience questions from basic science to clinical translation. His own research efforts focus on neurovascular coupling, cerebral oxygen delivery and consumption, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and physiological modeling. Studies are done in rodents and humans, invasively and non-invasively, microscopically and macroscopically, providing a powerful ability to translate findings from animals to humans, and conversely to address in animals questions raised during human studies. One example of this that will tie together many of Dr. Boas’ activities is studying functional brain recovery in survivors of stroke. Human neuroimaging by fMRI and fNIRS measures hemodynamic functional recovery but it is not known if neuro-vascular coupling differs in these patients compared to healthy subjects. Animal studies will answer this question enabling more quantitative interpretation of the human neuroimaging studies.

Director
Neurophotonics Center




Graduate Training at the Interface of Neuroscience, Optical Engineering and Data Science
07/08/2024 - 06/30/2029 (Multi-PI)
PI: David A. Boas, PhD
NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders & Stroke
5T32NS136080-02

Low-cost high-performance NIRS-SCOS device for non-invasive monitoring of cerebral blood flow and intracranial pressure in traumatic brain injury
06/01/2024 - 05/31/2029 (Subcontract PI)
The General Hospital Corporation d/b/a Massachusetts General Hospital NIH NINDS
5R01NS135081-02

NCS-FR: Engineering Brain Circuits for Complex Scene Analysis
09/01/2023 - 08/31/2028 (Multi-PI)
PI: David A. Boas, PhD
National Science Foundation
SMA-2319321

Neurophotonic Advances for Mechanistic Investigation of the Role of Capillary Dysfunction in Stroke Recovery
09/27/2022 - 08/31/2027 (PI)
NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders & Stroke
5R01NS127156-04

Computational Miniature Mesoscope for Cortex-wide, Cellular resolution Ca2+ Imaging in Freely Behaving Mice
04/01/2022 - 03/31/2027 (Co-Investigator)
NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders & Stroke
5R01NS126596-04

BRAIN CONNECTS: Mapping Connectivity of the Human Brainstem in a Nuclear Coordinate System
09/01/2023 - 08/31/2026 (Subcontract PI)
The General Hospital Corporation d/b/a Massachusetts General Hospital NIH NINDS
5U01NS132181-02

Expanding Inclusion of All Subjects for Ultra-High Density Wearable fNIRS in the Everyday World
09/01/2024 - 07/31/2026 (PI)
NIH/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging & Bioengineering
5UG3EB036035-02

Novel Volumetric Optical Microscopy to Unravel Cerebral Microvascular Architecture and the Role in Functional Neuroimaging in Human
08/01/2024 - 07/31/2026 (Subcontract PI)
The General Hospital Corporation d/b/a Massachusetts General Hospital NIH NINDS
5R01NS128843-04

A transformative method for functional brain imaging with Speckle Contrast Optical Spectroscopy
08/15/2023 - 07/31/2026 (Multi-PI)
PI: David A. Boas, PhD
NIH/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging & Bioengineering
5UG3EB034710-03

The Neuroscience of Everyday World- A novel wearable system for continuous measurement of brain function
09/22/2020 - 05/31/2025 (PI)
NIH/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging & Bioengineering
5U01EB029856-05

Showing 10 of 35 results. Show All Results


Title


Yr Title Project-Sub Proj Pubs
2025 Expanding Inclusion of All Subjects for Ultra-High Density Wearable fNIRS in the Everyday World 5UG3EB036035-02
2025 Graduate Training at the Interface of Neuroscience, Optical Engineering and Data Science 5T32NS136080-02
2025 A transformative method for functional brain imaging with Speckle Contrast Optical Spectroscopy 5UG3EB034710-03
2025 Neurophotonic Advances for Mechanistic Investigation of the Role of Capillary Dysfunction in Stroke Recovery 5R01NS127156-04
2024 Expanding Inclusion of All Subjects for Ultra-High Density Wearable fNIRS in the Everyday World 1UG3EB036035-01
2024 Graduate Training at the Interface of Neuroscience, Optical Engineering and Data Science 1T32NS136080-01
2024 A transformative method for functional brain imaging with Speckle Contrast Optical Spectroscopy 5UG3EB034710-02
2024 Neurophotonic Advances for Mechanistic Investigation of the Role of Capillary Dysfunction in Stroke Recovery 5R01NS127156-03
2024 The Neuroscience of Everyday World- A novel wearable system for continuous measurement of brain function 5U01EB029856-05
2023 A transformative method for functional brain imaging with Speckle Contrast Optical Spectroscopy 1UG3EB034710-01
Showing 10 of 114 results. Show All Results

Publications listed below are automatically derived from MEDLINE/PubMed and other sources, which might result in incorrect or missing publications. Faculty can login to make corrections and additions.

iCite Website       Copy PMIDs To Clipboard

  1. Anderson JE, Carlton LB, Kura S, O'Brien WJ, Rogers D, Rahimi P, Farzam PY, Zaman MH, Boas DA, Yücel MA. High-density multidistance fNIRS enhances detection of brain activity during a word-color Stroop task. Neurophotonics. 2025 Jul; 12(3):035010.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40917100; PMCID: PMC12412631; DOI: 10.1117/1.NPh.12.3.035010;
     
  2. Yücel MA, Anderson JE, Rogers D, Hajirahimi P, Farzam P, Gao Y, Kaplan RI, Braun EJ, Mukadam N, Duwadi S, Carlton L, Beeler D, Butler LK, Carpenter E, Girnis J, Wilson J, Tripathi V, Zhang Y, Sorger B, von Lühmann A, Somers DC, Cronin-Golomb A, Kiran S, Ellis TD, Boas DA. Quantifying the impact of hair and skin characteristics on fNIRS signal quality for enhanced inclusivity. Nat Hum Behav. 2025 Sep 02.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40897802
     
  3. Abdelhakeem AA, Chang S, Novoseltseva A, Hyman M, Mckee AC, Bigio IJ, Boas DA, Huber BR, Wang H. Quantitative analysis of lipofuscin in neurodegenerative diseases using serial sectioning two-photon microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy. Neurophotonics. 2025 Jul; 12(3):035007.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40809089; PMCID: PMC12348049; DOI: 10.1117/1.NPh.12.3.035007;
     
  4. Giblin JT, Kura S, Küreli G, Jiang J, Kiliç K, Li B, Sakadžic S, Devor A, Boas DA. Brief disruptions in capillary flow result in rapid onset of hypoxia. Neurophotonics. 2025 Jun; 12(Suppl 2):S22803.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40800118; PMCID: PMC12340613; DOI: 10.1117/1.NPh.12.S2.S22803;
     
  5. Pecukonis M, Gerson J, Gustafson-Alm H, Wood M, Yücel M, Boas DA, Tager-Flusberg H. The neural bases of language processing during social and non-social contexts: a fNIRS study of autistic and neurotypical preschool-aged children. Mol Autism. 2025 Aug 06; 16(1):40.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40770353; PMCID: PMC12330146; DOI: 10.1186/s13229-025-00655-3;
     
  6. Novoseltseva A, Kureli G, Chang S, Yang J, Antinew PD, Chandra A, Berghol S, Spurlock E, McKee AC, Huber B, Wang H, Boas DA, Bigio IJ. Imaging myelin degradation in ex vivo prefrontal cortex tissue blocks in Alzheimer's disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Alzheimers Dement. 2025 Aug; 21(8):e70582.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40843933; PMCID: PMC12371461; DOI: 10.1002/alz.70582;
     
  7. Kim BK, Howard AC, Cheng TY, Anderson JE, Zimmermann BB, Hazen E, Carlton L, Robinson M, Renna M, Yucel MA, Carp SA, Franceschini MA, Boas DA, Cheng X. Mapping human cerebral blood flow with high-density, multi-channel speckle contrast optical spectroscopy. bioRxiv. 2025 Jul 15.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40791320; PMCID: PMC12338529; DOI: 10.1101/2025.03.03.638332;
     
  8. Garrett A, Kim B, Gurel NZ, Sie EJ, Wilson BK, Marsili F, Forman JP, Hamburg NM, Boas DA, Roblyer D. Speckle contrast optical spectroscopy for cuffless blood pressure estimation based on microvascular blood flow and volume oscillations. Biomed Opt Express. 2025 Aug 01; 16(8):3004-3016.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40809974; PMCID: PMC12339296; DOI: 10.1364/BOE.560022;
     
  9. Tang RP, Kelley S, Küreli G, Long EA, Bressan PR, Shah S, Erdener SE, Jiang J, Giblin JT, Kura S, Simkulet MG, Rauscher BC, Schaffer CB, Nishimura N, Thunemann M, Devor A, Boas DA. Capillaries susceptible to frequent stall dynamics revealed by comparing OCT and bessel-2PM measurements. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2025 Oct; 45(10):1905-1917.View Related Profiles. PMID: 40562716; PMCID: PMC12202391; DOI: 10.1177/0271678X251353141;
     
  10. Howard AC, Kim B, Carlton L, Yücel MA, Liu B, Boas DA, Cheng X. Validation of the Linearity in Image Reconstruction Methods for Speckle Contrast Optical Tomography. IEEE J Sel Top Quantum Electron. 2025; 31(4). PMID: 40842636; PMCID: PMC12366760; DOI: 10.1109/jstqe.2025.3581407;
     
Showing 10 of 406 results. Show More

This graph shows the total number of publications by year, by first, middle/unknown, or last author.

Bar chart showing 406 publications over 32 distinct years, with a maximum of 23 publications in 2009

YearPublications
19941
19952
19962
19974
19983
19992
20005
20014
20026
200314
20048
200519
200610
200711
200820
200923
201019
201116
201211
201317
201412
201517
201622
201721
201815
201913
202022
202117
202213
202321
202420
202516
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