Biography

Dr. Mittal has acquired training and expertise in spectral imaging, cancer biology, pathology, and artificial intelligence. She is passionate about interfacing engineering technologies with clinical science to develop systems useful for patient care particularly for technology driven cancer management.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019
• M.S., Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, 2014
• B.S., Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, 2014

Previous appointments

• Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2019-2021)

Research Statement

Current clinical approaches either rely on physical changes in cells by manual observation of alterations in tissue morphology or average expression of molecular markers. New technological and analytical advances are needed to capture tumor heterogeneity at spatial-molecular level for improved patient care.

The Mittal Research Lab will investigate the molecular, genomic, and immunological signatures of cancer to develop individualized disease management approaches. Multiplexed measurements combined with artificial intelligence will enable the development of disease progression models, early interventions for improved outcomes, and personalized treatment.

Select publications

1. Mittal, S., Wrobel, T.P., Walsh, M., Kajdacsy-Balla, and Bhargava, R. (2021). Breast cancer histopathology using infrared spectroscopic imaging: The impact of instrumental configurations. Clinical Spectroscopy, 3, 100006.
2. Falahkheirkhah, K., Yeh, K., Mittal, S., Pfister, L., and Bhargava, R. (2021). Deep Learning-based protocols to enhance infrared imaging systems. Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 104390.
3. Mittal, S.*, Kim, J., and Bhargava, R. (2021). Statistical Considerations and Tools to Improve Histopathologic Protocols with Spectroscopic Imaging. Applied Spectroscopy, Under Review. *Corresponding author.
4. Schnell, M., Mittal, S., Falahkheirkhah, K., Mittal, A., Yeh, K., Kenkel, S., Kadjacsy-Balla, A., Carney, S., and Bhargava, R. (2020). All-digital Histopathology by infrared-optical hybrid microscopy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (7), 3388-3396
5. Kenkel, S., Mittal, S., and Bhargava, R. (2020). Molecular Characterization of Nanomaterials by Closed-Loop Atomic Force Microscopy-Infrared Spectroscopic Imaging. Nature Communications, 11 (1), 1-10.
6. Mittal, S and Bhargava, R. (2019). A comparison of mid-infrared spectral regions on the accuracy of tissue classification, Analyst, 144, 2635-2642.
7. Mittal, S., Stoean, S., Kajdacsy-Balla, and Bhargava, R. (2019). Digital Assessment of Stained Images for Comprehensive Tumor Analysis. Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, 7, 246.
8. Gupta, S.*, Mittal, S.*, Kajdacsy-Balla, A., Bhargava, R., and Bajaj, C. (2019). A Fully Automated, Faster Noise Rejection Approach to Increasing the Analytical Capability of Chemical Imaging for Digital Histopathology. PloS One, 14(4), e0205219. (*equal contribution)
9. Mittal, A., Mittal, S., Yeh, K., Higham, A., and Bhargava, R. (2019). Infrared Spectroscopic Imaging: A case study for digital molecular Histopathology. Molecular and Laser Spectroscopy: Advances and Applications- Part II.
10. Mittal, S., Yeh, K., Leslie, L. S., Kenkel, S., Kajdacsy-Balla, A., and Bhargava, R. (2018). Simultaneous cancer and tumor microenvironment subtyping using confocal infrared microscopy for all-digital molecular Histopathology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (25).
11. Kenkel, S., Mittal, A., Mittal, S., & Bhargava, R. (2018). Probe-sample interaction-independent Atomic Force Microscopy-Infrared (AFM-IR) spectroscopy: towards robust nanoscale compositional mapping. Analytical Chemistry, 90(15), 8845-8855.
12. Mittal, S., Wrobel, T.P., Leslie, L.S., Kajdacsy-Balla, and Rohit Bhargava (2016). A four-class model for digital breast histopathology using high-definition fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopic imaging. Prog. Biomed. Opt. Imaging - Proc. SPIE, Vol. 9791, p. 979118
13. Devtter, B.M., Kenkel, S., Mittal, S., and Wrobel, T.P. (2016). Characterization of the structure of Low-E substrates and consequences for IR transflection measurements. Vibrational Spectroscopy, 91 (2017):119- 127.
14. Ostadhossein, F., Misra, S.K, Mukherjee, P., Ostadhossein, A., Daza, E., Tiwari, S., Mittal, S., Gryka, Bhargava, R. and Pan, D. (2016). Breast Cancer Therapy: Defined Host-Guest Chemistry on Nanocarbon for Sustained Inhibition of Cancer. Small, 12(42), 5782-5782.
15. Rathore, A. S. (corresponding author, PI) Mittal, S., Pathak, M., and Mahalingam, V. (2014). Chemometrics application in biotech processes: assessing comparability across processes and scales. Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, 89(9), 1311-1316.
16. Mayerich, D. M., Walsh, M., Kadjacsy-Balla, A., Mittal, S., and Bhargava, R. (2014). Breast histopathology using random decision forests-based classification of infrared spectroscopic imaging data. SPIE Medical Imaging, Vol. 9041, p. 904107.
17. Rathore, A. S. (corresponding author, PI) Mittal, S., Pathak, M., and Arora, A. (2014). Guidance for performing multivariate data analysis of bioprocessing data: Pitfalls and recommendations. Biotechnology Progress, 30(4), 967-973.
18. Rathore, A. S. (corresponding author, PI) Mittal, S., Lute, S., and Brorson, K. (2012). Chemometrics applications in biotechnology processes: Predicting column integrity and impurity clearance during reuse of chromatography resin. Biotechnology Progress, 28(5), 1308-1314.

Honors & awards

• Co-Principal Investigator, Partnership 2020: US-India Higher Education Grant
• Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship (2019-2021)
• Tomas B. Hirschfeld Scholar Award, Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (2019)
• William G. Fateley Award, Outstanding Contribution to Vibrational Spectroscopy (2019)
• Baxter Young Investigator Award (2018)
• Invited Speaker and Winner, Annual Engineering Ph.D. Summit, EPFL Lausanne (2018)
• Eastern Analytical Symposium Graduate Research Award (2018)
• Nadine Barrie Smith Memorial Fellowship (2018)
• Big Data Summer Fellow for Computational Medicine (2017)
• Illinois Distinguished Fellowship (2014-2017)

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