SPIE announces its 2021 society awards

13 Jan 2021

21 recipients represent achievements across wide range of light-based sciences and key advances made with these technologies.

The Awards Committee of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, and publisher of optics.org, has announced the recipients of its prestigious annual awards.

Honoring transformative advancements in multiple areas — including medicine, astronomy, lithography, optical metrology, and community-focused achievements — the Society's awards recognize technical accomplishments as well as committed service to SPIE and support of its organizational mission.

Categories and winners

SPIE Gold Medal: Hugo Thienpont In recognition of his profound and lasting impact on society and pioneering vision for photonics. The different disruptive instruments that Thienpont has developed and implemented during the past decades have generated a tangible impact on education, research, innovation, and societal well-being in Flanders, across Europe, and beyond.

SPIE President's Award: Maria Yzuel In recognition of her inspirational leadership in the field of optics; tireless dedication to the promotion of equity, diversity, and inclusion in science; and many years of outstanding service to SPIE and its international community.

SPIE Directors' Award: Maryellen Giger In recognition of her outstanding service to SPIE and the optics and photonics communities. Giger has been a key voice in data-driven approaches, and an active leader in pushing forward our equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts.

SPIE Mozi Award: Xiang Zhang In recognition of his seminal, fundamental contributions in optical physics and experimental research in the optical perfect lens.

SPIE Britton Chance Award in Biomedical Optics: Enrico Gratton In recognition of a lifetime of contributions to the field of biomedical optics, including pioneering theoretical and instrumentation developments in fluorescence spectroscopy, fluorescence microscopy, and diffuse medical imaging.

SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award: Keisuke Goda In recognition of his significant contributions to the field of biophotonics through the development of innovative ultrafast optical imaging and spectroscopy methods and their integration into microfluidic platforms.

SPIE A.E. Conrady Award in Optical Engineering: Dave Aikens In recognition of his world-leading expertise, training programs, and development of optical engineering and optical standards.

SPIE Harrison H. Barrett Award in Medical Imaging: Kevin Berbaum In recognition of more than three decades of dedication in the study of Satisfaction of Search, and significant contributions to receiver operating characteristic analysis.

SPIE Harold E. Edgerton Award in High-Speed Optics: Vladislav Yakovlev In recognition of his remarkable contributions to ultrafast laser technology, ultrafast spectroscopies, and ultrafast imaging and their applications, as well as for his SPIE outreach.

SPIE Dennis Gabor Award in Diffractive Optics: Małgorzata Kujawińska In recognition of her outstanding and manifold contributions to holographic technologies in optical metrology, optical imaging, and optical information processing, as well as for her extraordinary dedication to the SPIE community and widely recognized international leadership in applied optical engineering.

SPIE George W. Goddard Award in Space and Airborne Optics: Thomas Rimmele In recognition of his invention and application of extended-source adaptive optics delivering diffraction-limited, high-resolution imaging of the solar surface.

SPIE G. G. Stokes Award in Optical Polarization: Nirmalya Ghosh In recognition of his extensive research in the field of Mueller matrix polarimetry and applications of Mueller matrix polarimetric spectroscopy and imaging in various interdisciplinary fields including quantum optics, space optics, biomedical optics, chemistry, material science, and fluorescence spectroscopy.

SPIE Chandra S. Vikram Award in Optical Metrology: Krzysztof Patorski In recognition of his seminal contributions to diffraction, interferometry, moiré fields, and fringe analysis with applications in optical metrology, experimental mechanics, and biomedical engineering.

SPIE Frits Zernike Award in Microlithography: Bruce Smith In recognition of his many contributions as a researcher and leader in the microlithography community, and for his achievements in educating an entire generation of engineers who continue to advance academic research and industry understanding.

SPIE Diversity Outreach Award: Celine d'Orgeville In recognition of her leadership in diversity, inclusion, and equity activities in Australia and elsewhere in the world.

SPIE Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award in Photonics: Jorge Ojeda-Castañeda In recognition of his outstanding contributions to modern and advanced imaging technologies for the development of phase-space representations of imaging devices, which enable the design of innovative techniques for extending field depth, and for proposing novel designs employing lenses with tunable optical power.

SPIE Maiman Laser Award: Anne Tropper In recognition of her pioneering contributions to rare-earth doped fiber and optically pumped semiconductor lasers.

SPIE Early Career Achievement Award — Academic Focus: Muyinatu Bell In recognition of her pioneering contributions to photoacoustic imaging for surgical guidance, including innovative technology designs, novel deep learning applications, informative spatial coherence beam forming theory, and visionary clinical possibilities.

SPIE Early Career Achievement Award — Industry/Government Focus: Sergio Carbajo In recognition of his capacity to unify ultrafast and quantum optics with X-ray science to advance the mission of Basic Energy Sciences facilities.

SPIE Maria J. Yzuel Educator Award: Bishnu Pal In recognition of four decades of sustained contributions in education, outreach, research, technical program committees of global flagship conferences, and editing of four popular publications in guided wave optics and photonics.

SPIE Aden and Marjorie Meinel Technology Achievement Award: Shouleh Nikzad In recognition of her pioneering and sustained contributions to the development of ultraviolet instrument technologies, especially imagers for space exploration and extension of their use in terrestrial applications.

The complete listing of all SPIE awards and recipients is available here.