Florian Willomitzer Receives Optica Foundation Award

Congratulations to Dr. Florian Willomitzer for his selection as one of ten awardees to receive $100,000, for his proposal "Noninvasive high-resolution imaging through living tissue with single-shot synthetic wavelength holography." Optica Foundation awarded a total of $1 million dollars to support research in the three core categories health, environment, and information. Alan Willner, chair of the 20th Anniversary Challenge Selection Committee and an Optica past president said “The selection committee is inspired by the outstanding quality of the awardees who truly represent the finest aspects of our membership. The winning proposals demonstrate superior creative ingenuity, applying photonics in novel ways to work toward solutions for a wide berth of society's most critical challenges." Read the full press release.

Florian's proposal discusses a "computation camera that can image through dynamic scattering media with high resolution." The camera is primarily proposed for medical imaging applications through living (moving) tissue. The proposed noninvasive technique only uses light in (or close to) the optical wave band and works with standard off-the-shelf camera technology – theoretically even with mobile phone camera sensors. The technique leverages the huge potential of carefully designed optical systems paired with sophisticated algorithms. Upon successful completion, the camera has the potential to become part of a new wave of computation imaging devices that will represent key technologies in the near future. More about the technique and Florian’s research can be found on his lab's website.