Biography
Jessica C. Ramella-Roman earned her degree in Electrical Engineering (Laurea) from the University of Pavia, Italy, in 1993 and subsequently worked for five years in the semiconductor industry. In 1999, she transitioned back to academia to pursue graduate studies in bio-optics, obtaining both her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Oregon Health Science University in 2004. Following her doctoral work, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University from 2004 to 2005.
Ramella-Roman began her academic career as an Assistant Professor at The Catholic University of America in 2005, where she was later promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2011. In 2013, she joined Florida International University (FIU) as an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and as an Associate Research Professor at the Herbert Wertheim School of Medicine. In 2025, she was promoted to Professor.
Her research career has focused on developing new optical polarization-sensitive techniques for applications in medical imaging and the diagnosis of various pathologies, with a particular interest in women’s health.
She has led multiple research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and other organizations. Her contributions to the field have been recognized through her election as a Fellow of SPIE, Optica, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Since 2019, she has served as the SPIE BIOS Program Track Chair for Tissue Optics, Laser-Tissue Interaction, and Tissue Engineering. Additionally, she is the Chair of the Polarized Light and Optical Angular Momentum for Biomedical Diagnostics conference and the Vice-Chair of The Poincaré Webinar Series on Optical Polarization and Related Phenomena.
She has published over 90 peer-reviewed articles in polarization-sensitive imaging and biomedical optics.
Awards & Honors
- Fellow of SPIE
- Fellow of AIMBE
- Fellow of OPTICA
Education
- MSEE
- Ph.D.