2021 Emmett N. Leith Medal Winner

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The Optical Society Names Bahram Javidi the 2021 Emmet N. Leith Medal Recipient

The Optical Society is pleased to announce that Bahram Javidi, University of Connecticut, USA, has been selected as the 2021 recipient of the Emmet N. Leith Medal. Javidi is honored for exceptional innovation and transformative technological impact on the field of information optics, including pioneering contributions to digital holography for life sciences, information security, optical sensing, and processing of photon starved scenes.

Bahram Javidi earned his B.S. from George Washington University, USA, and M.S. and Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University, USA. He has held visiting positions at Michigan State University, USA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, University of Stuttgart, Germany, and Hanscom Air Force Base, USA. He has been at the University of Connecticut since 1988, and is currently the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor.

Javidi’s impact has been felt on a range of technologies related to information optics, digital holography, and optical imaging. He is a pioneer in the field of dynamic 3D integral imaging and has contributed a number of breakthroughs in the field. He has substantially advanced the field of modern 3D integral imaging, and has made extraordinary contributions to the field of bio-photonics sensors for automated disease identification using digital holography. His work has gained support from the US Department of Defense as well as a number of companies including Nikon, Lockheed Martin, Samsung, and Honeywell.

He has been recognized with numerous awards including OSA’s C.E.K Mees Medal and Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize; SPIE’s Dennis Gabor Award and Technology Achievement Award; the Humboldt Research Award; the Quantum Electronics and Optics Prize from the European Optical Society; and IEEE Photonics Society’s William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2008, and is a Fellow of OSA, IEEE, SPIE, European Optical Society, the Institute of Physics, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and Imaging Science and Technology.

Established in 2006 the Leith Medal recognizes seminal contributions to the field of optical information processing. In assessing the significance of the contribution, consideration is given to all aspects including theoretical and conceptual breakthroughs as well as practical applications. It honors Emmett N. Leith, a world-renowned scientist in holography and optical information processing, and is endowed by General Dynamics, the University of Michigan College of Engineering, U.S.A., Physical Optics Corporation and individual contributors, including Alexander Sawchuk, Joseph Goodman, James R. Fienup, G. Michael Morris, Tom Cathey and James Wyant.