Rate My Professor Vadim Backman

Vadim Backman is the Sachs Family Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Professor of Medicine (Hematology/Oncology) and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the Feinberg School of Medicine. He holds leadership positions as Director of the Center for Physical Genomics and Engineering, Associate Director of Research Technology and Infrastructure, and Program Leader in Cancer and Physical Sciences at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. Backman received his Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, M.S. in Physics from MIT, M.S. in Physics from St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, and B.S. in Physics (Honors) from St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute.

Backman's research bridges physical and biological sciences, focusing on physical genomics to elucidate human genome function and its dysregulation in disease through nanoscale imaging, superresolution optical nanoscopy, genome nanoimaging, and biophotonics technologies. These enable novel methods for regulating gene expression patterns, with applications in disease diagnostics and therapeutics, from basic light-tissue physics to multi-center clinical trials for early detection of cancers including lung, colon, pancreatic, ovarian, prostate, and esophageal. He has authored over 230 peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Nature, Nature Medicine, Science Advances, PNAS, and Physical Review Letters, with key recent papers including "Geometrically encoded positioning of introns, intergenic segments, and exons in the human genome" (Advanced Science, 2025), "Leveraging chromatin packing domains to target chemoevasion in vivo" (PNAS, 2025), "Chromatin conformation, gene transcription, and nucleosome remodeling as an emergent system" (Science Advances, 2025), and "Local volume concentration, packing domains, and scaling properties of chromatin" (eLife, 2024). Backman holds over 20 patents, co-founded three biotech companies, chaired conferences such as OSA Biomed and SPIE Biomedical Applications of Light Scattering, and led NCI projects including Bioengineering Research Partnership and Early Detection Research Network. His honors include the Cozzarelli Prize from the National Academy of Sciences (2017), Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2009), MIT Technology Review Top 100 Innovators (2004), and NSF CAREER Award (2003).