SPIE announces its 2024 Society awards

10 Jan 2024

20 award recipients represent a wide range of achievements across light-based sciences and technologies.

SPIE Gold Medal winner: Akhlesh Lakhtakia.

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

Honoring transformative advancements in a variety of professional areas — including medicine, astronomy, lithography, optical metrology, optical design, and community leadership — the society’s awards recognize technical accomplishments as well as committed service to SPIE and support of its organizational mission.

Categories and winners are as follows:

SPIE Gold Medal: Akhlesh Lakhtakia For pioneering research on electromagnetic fields in complex materials including isotropic chiral, bianisotropic, and composite materials, metamaterials, and nanomaterials.
SPIE President’s Award: Katie Schwertz For outstanding service to SPIE and the optics community, through work that advances optical systems design, engages students, and shares the excitement of optics with the public.
SPIE Directors’ Award: Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop For pioneering research in optics and photonics, and for distinguished service to SPIE as a leading light in promoting educational programs and supporting women in science.
SPIE Mozi Award: Andrea Alù For seminal contributions to the field of optical metamaterials as well as their applications for wavefront manipulation and enhancement of nonreciprocal and nonlinear phenomena.
SPIE Mozi Award: Teri W. Odom For significant contributions to the field of nanophotonics and to the development of moiré photonics.
SPIE Britton Chance Award in Biomedical Optics: Gerard L. Coté For transformative advances in both fundamental and translational optical research toward the diagnosis and monitoring of chronic and infectious diseases.
SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award: Ji-Xin Cheng For the invention and commercialization of mid-infrared photothermal microscopy that allows highly sensitive dye-free bond-selective imaging of living cells and organisms.
SPIE Rudolf and Hilda Kingslake Award in Optical Design: David Shafer For outstanding contributions to the field of optical design including DUV and EUV photolithographic scanner designs that define the current technological limit of the semiconductor industry.
SPIE Harrison H. Barrett Award in Medical Imaging: Kyle J. Myers For fundamental contributions to the field of image science, with an emphasis on the role of science in regulatory evaluations of imaging methods.
SPIE Harold E. Edgerton Award in High-Speed Optics: Clara Saraceno For groundbreaking contributions to the development of ultrafast high-power lasers and laser-driven THz sources.
SPIE Dennis Gabor Award in Diffractive Optics: Jürgen Czarske For significant contributions to the development of digital holography, and related techniques for biomedicine, fiber communication, imaging, information processing, and laser metrology.
SPIE A.E. Conrady Award in Optical Engineering: Thomas U. Kampe For industry-recognized leadership in optical engineering, design, and development – including critical Earth-monitoring instruments – as well as for mentoring the next generation of optical engineers.
SPIE G. G. Stokes Award in Optical Polarization: Curtis R. Menyuk For pioneering studies of linear and nonlinear polarization effects in guided-wave photonics which have impacted basic science, telecommunications systems, lasers, and many other photonics-based technologies.
SPIE Chandra S. Vikram Award in Optical Metrology: Anand Asundi For numerous contributions to coherent optical metrology and sensing, with special attention to digital technologies.
SPIE Frits Zernike Award for Microlithography: Richard Sandstrom For leadership in the development of lithographic-grade lasers and EUV light sources.
SPIE Diversity Outreach Award: Preeti Jagadev For excellence in promoting and advocating diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM.
SPIE Maria Goeppert Mayer Award in Photonics: Iam-Choon Khoo For foundational contributions to linear and nonlinear optical properties of liquid crystals and their applications in wide-ranging, wave-mixing, and self-action effects.
SPIE Maiman Laser Award: Anne L’Huillier For the discovery of high harmonic generation in gases, and contributions to developments in attoscience.
SPIE María J. Yzuel Educator Award: Mary G. Turner For a lifetime of dedication to the teaching of optical design, and for services to the optics community.
SPIE Aden and Marjorie Meinel Technology Achievement Award: M. Saif Islam For highly impactful innovations in ultra-fast and highly efficient photodetectors enabled by photon-trapping structures.

The complete listing of the SPIE Society Awards and recipients is available here.