That's Dr. Sam Streeter

Sam Streeter grew up in the Upper North Platte Valley. He spent his childhood in Saratoga, getting into mischief with his big brother, hanging out with his parents, Jeff and Sandy, and a really cool dog named Winston.

Streeter's journey started when he graduated in 2009 from Saratoga High School and chose to attend Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Dartmouth is one of the finest ivy league schools in the country with an acceptance rate of less than ten percent. Streeter walked through those doors in the fall of 2009 as a freshman and he walked out those same doors last month as a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Biomedical Engineering from the Thayer School of Engineering.

Streeter said that he was interested in medicine and engineering since his early days in college.

Streeter earned his BA in Engineering sciences in 2013 and graduated cum laude with high honors. He was also a James O. Freedman Presidential Scholar.

In 2014, he received his Bachelor of Engineering degree.

Streeter went to work at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL), an Army Corps of Engineers research and development center, studying electromagnetic (radio) wave propagation in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Streeter left CRELL in January 2018 to attend graduate school.

Streeter's thesis was titled, "Advancing Combined Radiological and Optical Scanning for Breast-Conserving Surgery Margin Guidance".

The latter part of Streeter's graduate school program was funded through a prestigious National Institute of Health fellowship from the National Cancer Institute called a Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service award.

During Streeter's final year of graduate school, he was a near-peer mentor for the Dartmouth SEPA program. He worked with local teachers and students on the project, developing resources for teachers and students in grades six through eight. Nicknamed "Super Scientists", only eight to ten graduate students are selected each year from the entire Dartmouth graduate student population, approximately 2300 students, to be rural middle school mentors in the Dartmouth Rural STEM Educator Partnership.

Streeter was recently awarded Best Translational Research Paper at the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers Photonics West 2022 Conference. According to Streeter, "Transitional research takes scientific discoveries made in the laboratory, or clinic and transforms them into new treatments and medical care that improve the health of the population".

Breast cancer is a concern for Streeter as it has affected his mom, his aunt and his grandmother. He also remembers family friends from his youth that were in this situation.

He said that "Breast-conserving surgery involves localized excision of cancer, and in combination with radiation therapy, is the most common treatment for early-stage breast cancer".

According to Streeter, few, if any tools exist to assess the tumor margins during surgery.

The problem with margin assessment during surgery felt very real and tangible to him because there, currently, is no tool to make sure all of the cancer is removed during surgery.

This leads to twenty percent of breast cancer patients nationwide requiring a second surgery.

Streeter's thesis research is aimed to advance a unique form of sub-diffuse, wide-field optical imagining. This imaging technique would improve the assessment of tumor margins during surgery, thereby reducing the possibility of re-excision procedures and ultimately decreasing patient disfigurement, patient morbidity, and healthcare costs.

The development of this advanced technology would also help reduce the potential for surgery-related complications, and the delay of adjuvant therapy, i.e. chemotherapy, radiation, hormonal, and antibody therapies.

If this imaging technique can be put into play during a surgery, the results would be nothing less than earth shaking