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Optica Names Aydogan Ozcan the 2022 Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize Recipient
Optica (formerly OSA) is pleased to announce that Aydogan Ozcan, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, has been selected as the 2022 recipient of the Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize. Ozcan is honored for seminal optical engineering contributions to computational optical imaging, lensfree microscopy, holography and mobile optical sensing.
Aydogan Ozcan received his MS degree and PhD from Stanford University, USA. He is currently the Chancellor’s Professor and the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Innovation at UCLA and an HHMI Professor with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA. He is also the Associate Director of the California NanoSystems Institute, USA.
Ozcan pioneered the use of computational optics for the development of significantly more cost-effective and highly sensitive imaging and sensing instruments, creating innovative mobile microscopy and diagnostics tools for use in developing countries and resource-limited environments. He also pioneered a suite of lens-free microscopy and on-chip holography techniques that are widely used in high-throughput imaging and lab-on-a-chip applications for rapidly screening micro/nanoscale objects over orders of magnitude larger sample volumes, generating giga-pixel microscopy images using field-portable instruments. Ozcan’s research on computational imaging, microscopy, mobile sensing and diagnostics created widely-scalable mobile technologies for a variety of applications, which have the potential to dramatically increase the reach of advanced biomedical technologies to developing countries and resource limited settings.
He holds more than 50 patents in microscopy, holography, computational imaging, sensing, mobile diagnostics, nonlinear optics and fiber-optics, and has more than 20 pending patent applications. He is a highly-cited author who has published a book as well as over 800 co-authored peer-reviewed publications. Ozcan has received several awards for his work including the International Commission for Optics ICO Prize, the SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Rahmi Koc Science Medal, National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award, Distinguished Lecturer Award, and MIT’s TR35 Award for his seminal contributions to computational imaging, sensing and diagnostics. He is a Lifetime Fellow Member of Optica, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and SPIE, and a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Physical Society, the Guggenheim Foundation, IEEE, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
First presented in 1982, the Fraunhofer Award recognizes significant research accomplishments in the field of optical engineering, and honors the contributions that Joseph Fraunhofer made to the field. The prize was added in 1992 in memory of Robert M. Burley, who exemplified many of the highest attributes of the optical engineer and was the first recipient of the award. The award and prize are endowed by the Baird Corporation, the Burley Family, and Prof. Shin-Tson Wu.
About Optica
Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, is the society 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.
