Akita has been awarded a contract from Massachusetts General Hospital for work on a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded project to develop dual function theranostic constructs for photoacoustic guided surgery and photodynamic therapy.  This project, which also involves researchers from Tufts University, is an academic-industry partnership designed to address the problem of oral cancer by providing an imaging and treatment tool that can be used during surgery. Akita’s role is designing and synthesizing specialized light-absorbing dyes for the photoacoustic element of the construct.