In this course, students will learn about several optical techniques that can be applied to the study of disease and specifically, cancer as well as how research methods can be applied in this context. Laboratory exercises are included to give hands-on experience with technology- specific laboratory skills. Throughout the course, students will complete critiques of the research methods, results and conclusions of peer-reviewed journal articles relating to the application of optical methods. Using the information, they have learned in class, students will complete a short-term research project from a pre-approved list. Ideally, students will use this process to formulate a hypothesis, design an experiment to test their hypothesis, and interpret their findings in terms of whether it tested the hypothesis.