2025 SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to Morgan Fogarty…

12 Dec 2024

…and Paul Corkum awarded American Physical Society’s 2025 APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research.

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, has announced Morgan Fogarty, who is expected to receive her PhD in Imaging Science from Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) in February, as the recipient of the 2025 SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship in Problem-Driven Biomedical Optics and Analytics. The annual award of $75,000 supports interdisciplinary problem-driven research and provides opportunities for translating new technologies into clinical practice for improving human health. Fogarty will be recognized at the Sunday evening plenary session during SPIE Photonics West, scheduled for 26 January 2025.

Fogarty’s research — conducted in conjunction with Sherwood Moore Professor of Radiology Joseph Culver at the Culver Lab and Biophotonics Research Center at WashU — will build on her doctoral work, exploring the potential of using diffuse optical tomography (DOT) for monitoring language function and recovery in post-stroke patients. Applying the same technology, she also hopes to establish the feasibility of brain-computer interfaces to restore inter-personal communication for post-stroke patients.

“I am deeply honored to be awarded the SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Fellowship for my research using diffuse optical tomography for post-stroke language mapping,” said Fogarty. “Building on my doctoral research, I am excited to translate our findings into a clinical setting with the support of this fellowship. Understanding and monitoring language recovery using brain mapping opens the door for improved speech-language therapy and the potential for augmented communication. This fellowship enables me to take the initial steps toward translating DOT into a clinical tool in post-stroke recovery, and I couldn't be happier for the opportunity to continue this research.”

“On behalf of the SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Fellowship committee, we are very pleased to join with SPIE in supporting Morgan Fogarty this year,” said Committee Co-Chairs Rox Anderson and Gabriela Apiou. “She was chosen from among a highly competitive group of excellent proposals with clearly promising potential for scientific, technological, and clinical impact. That combination is at the heart of biomedical optics and photonics as a field and the foundation of the SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp fellowship. We look forward to hearing more from Morgan Fogarty and seeing the outcome of this project.”

Honoring the career of medical laser pioneer Franz Hillenkamp, the SPIE-Hillenkamp Fellowship is a partnership between multiple international biomedical laboratories — the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, the Beckman Laser Institute, the Manstein Lab in the Cutaneous Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, Medical Laser Center Lübeck, and Boston University — and the Hillenkamp family. The endowment is funded through generous donations from the biomedical optics community, with SPIE contributing matching funds up to $1.5 million.

Applications for the 2026 SPIE-Hillenkamp Fellowship will open in the Spring of 2025.

Paul Corkum awarded 2025 APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research

Professor Paul Corkum, a physics researcher at the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) best known for his pioneering contributions to attosecond science, has been awarded the American Physical Society’s 2025 APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research.

This prestigious prize recognizes significant contributions that significantly advance the understanding of the physical universe. The citation accompanying the award highlights Corkum’s synthesis of plasma physics, strong-field spectroscopy and electron scattering concepts to create a new field of strong-field physics, which spans atomic to solid-state physics.

While at the Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory (JASLab), which later brought together NRC and uOttawa researchers, Corkum and his JASLab colleagues were responsible for taking a photograph of an electron orbiting an atom. The technology developed for doing so uses extremely short pulses of light and a special camera to capture images of infinitely small particles.

“To give you a sense of how short the pulses are, comparing one attosecond to one second is like comparing one second to the age of the universe,” said Corkum. “Because of their precision, lasers are used in a variety of applications in different fields. We’ve now got a laser technique to start doing laser physics of cells – we might do laser medicine on cells.”

“Professor Corkum is truly among the brightest minds of our time,” said Interim Vice-President, Research and Innovation Julie St-Pierre. “His groundbreaking achievements, passion for discovery and dedication to mentoring future scientists have made an extraordinary impact. We are proud to have him on our faculty and wish him continued success in pushing the boundaries of knowledge.”

Corkum’s research in laser technology began in the 1990s. This research, a sub-area of photonics, brings physicists closer to controlling the movements of electrons inside molecules. This could lead to advances in telecommunications, computing, engineering and medicine. “His breakthroughs in attosecond science have laid the foundation for the next generation of research in this field. This prestigious recognition is a testament to an illustrious researcher whose thirst for understanding has had a significant impact on the world around us,” said University of Ottawa President and Vice-Chancellor Jacques Frémont.