Sapun Parekh comes from a background in electrical engineering, bioengineering, and biomaterials. His PhD thesis focused on force generation and mechanics of semiflexible actin networks in cells that power cell movements and shape changes. He learned about vibrational imaging and stem cell biology as postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Standards and Technology under Marc Cicerone and Carl Simon. He has spent significant time building microscopy instrumentation from high-resolution optical microscopes to atomic force microscopes. His research interests include applications of vibrational imaging in biology and molecular biophysics as related to control of cellular behavior.