2024 Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award Winner

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Optica Names Zhongping Chen the 2024 Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award Recipient

Optica is pleased to announce that Zhongping Chen, University of California, Irvine, USA, has been selected as the 2024 recipient of the Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award. Chen is honored for pioneering research, development, and clinical translation of Doppler optical coherence tomography (OCT), OCT angiography, OCT elastography, and multimodality intravascular imaging.

Chen received his B.S. degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, USA. He is currently a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the F-OCT Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine. He is a co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of OCT Medical Imaging, Inc.

A pioneer in biophotonics, he is recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to the development of Doppler optical coherence tomography (D-OCT) and optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). The phase-resolved D-OCT and Doppler variance imaging developed by Chen’s group have been widely used not only as powerful research tools for imaging and quantifying vascular changes in neuroscience and cancer research but also in clinical applications such as ophthalmology. Chen’s research integrates fundamental research, technological development, biomedical studies, and clinical applications. He has made significant impacts in translating numerous optical imaging technologies to clinical applications. These include imaging and diagnosis of laryngeal cancer and neonatal subglottic stenosis, airway injury and lung cancer, oral cancers, obstructive sleep apnea, ocular diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and brain aneurysms. Dr. Chen has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and review articles and holds over 25 patents in the fields of biomaterials, biosensors, and biomedical imaging.

Chen is a Fellow of Optica, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and SPIE.

Established in 2012, the Feld Biophotonics Award recognizes innovative and influential contributions to the field of biophotonics, regardless of career stage. The award encompasses all areas of biophotonics including fundamental optics discoveries in biology, development of new theoretical frameworks and novel instrumentation and clinical translational research for biomedicine. It honors Michael Feld for his fundamental contributions to applications of photonics technologies to solving biomedical problems, and is endowed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., Coherent Inc., David Feld, Ramachandra Dasari, Adam Wax, Kyungwon An, Robert Gold, Charles Holbrow, Firooz Partovi, Manoharan Ramasamy, Rebecca Richards-Kortum and Guillermo Tearney.

About Optica

Optica, the society advancing optics and photonics worldwide, is dedicated to promoting the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in the field. Founded in 1916, it is the leading organization for scientists, engineers, business professionals, students and others interested in the science of light. Optica’s renowned publications, meetings, online resources and in-person activities fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate scientific, technical and educational achievement