Dr. Alba Alfonso-Garcia studied Physics at the University of Barcelona and specialized in Biophotonics with a master’s at the Karlsruhe School of Optics and Photonics in Germany. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from University of California, Irvine before joining UC Davis for her postdoctoral training. She leads the Advanced Light-based Applications Laboratory, developing label-free optical spectroscopy and imaging tools for biomedical research and clinical use, including disease detection, therapy monitoring, and surgical guidance. Her research interests include label-free fluorescence lifetime imaging, spontaneous and stimulated Raman spectroscopy, and translational biophotonics.