Optica Foundation Challenge
Foundation
Optica Foundation Challenge
Use photonics. Find a solution. Change the world.
Foundation
The Optica Foundation recognizes ten early-career professionals with exceptional ideas to leverage optics and photonics and address global challenges. These individuals drive new, impactful scientific discoveries with the potential to transform our world. We consider proposals for problem-solving solutions resulting from basic research and development or enhancements of photonics-based technology in three categories: Environment, Health and Information.
Winners each receive US$100,000 prizes to support addressing the challenge over one to two years. These prizes provide seed money to ideas that may be difficult to fund from other sources.
2024 Recipients
Viktor Dremin
Aston University, UK
Targeting retina microvasculature to identify the link between diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases (Vasculink) (Health)
Danielle Harper
University of Cambridge, UK
Optically guided intraoperative assessment of surgical margins in cancer (Health).jpg?lang=en-us)
Dickson Kinyua
Kirinyaga University, Kenya
Development of Robotic Microscopy for rapid and cost-effective malaria diagnosis (Health)
Saroch Leedumrongw-atthanakun
Prince of Songkla University, Thailand
Quantum-enhanced optical learning machine (Information)
Rijan Maharjan
Phutung Research Institute, Nepal
Developing a portable and low-cost device using dynamic lightscattering for Rotavirus detection in environmental and drinking water (Health)
Fay Nicolson
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, USA
Enhancing surgical precision: automated SESORRS for improved tumor detection and resection (Health).jpg?lang=en-us)
Alba Paniagua-Diaz
University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
C-SMART: a wearable solution to cataracts (Health)
Uğur Teğin
Koç University, Turkey
Inverse-designed energy-efficient nonlinear photonic multi-channel neural network (Information)
Chiara Trovatello
Columbia University, USA & Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Quantum-entangled Photon-pairs On-chip based on Layered Integrated Semiconductors (q-POLIS) (Information)
Past Recipients
2023
2022
Contributors
The Optica Foundation Challenge is administered and funded solely by the Optica Foundation.
