The term biophotonics denotes a combination of biology and photonics, with photonics being the science and technology of generation, manipulation, and detection of photons, quantum units of light. Photonics is related to electronics and photons. Photons play a central role in information technologies, such as fiber optics, the way electrons do in electronics.
The Order of Mapungubwe is South Africa's highest honour. It was instituted on 6 December 2002, and is granted by the President of South Africa, for achievements in the international arena which have served South Africa's interests. The order originally had three classes, and was enlarged to four in 2004:
SPIE is an international not-for-profit professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It organizes technical conferences, trade exhibitions, and continuing education programs for researchers and developers in the light-based fields of physics, including: optics, photonics, and imaging engineering. The society publishes peer-reviewed scientific journals, conference proceedings, monographs, tutorial texts, field guides, and reference volumes in print and online. SPIE is especially well-known for Photonics West, one of the laser and photonics industry's largest combined conferences and tradeshows which is held annually in San Francisco. SPIE also participates as partners in leading educational initiatives, and in 2020, for example, provided more than $5.8 million in support of optics education and outreach programs around the world.
Bruce J. Tromberg is an American photochemist and a leading researcher in the field of biophotonics. He is the director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Before joining NIH, he was Professor of Biomedical Engineering at The Henry Samueli School of Engineering and of Surgery at the School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine. He was the principal investigator of the Laser Microbeam and Medical Program (LAMMP), and the Director of the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic at Irvine. He was a co-leader of the Onco-imaging and Biotechnology Program of the NCI Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at Irvine.
An ultrashort pulse laser is a laser that emits ultrashort pulses of light, generally of the order of femtoseconds to one picosecond. They are also known as ultrafast lasers owing to the speed at which pulses "turn on" and "off"—not to be confused with the speed at which light propagates, which is determined by the properties of the medium, particularly its index of refraction, and can vary as a function of field intensity and wavelength.
Satoshi Kawata is a scientist based in Japan who is active in nanotechnology, photonics, plasmonics, and other areas of applied physics. He is a Professor of Department of Applied Physics at Osaka University. He is also a Chief Scientist at RIKEN. Kawata was the 2022 president of Optica.
Optical transfection is a biomedical technique that entails introducing nucleic acids into cells using light. All cells are surrounded by a plasma membrane, which prevents many substances from entering or exiting the cell. Lasers can be used to burn a tiny hole in this membrane, allowing substances to enter. This is tremendously useful to biologists who are studying disease, as a common experimental requirement is to put things into cells.
Glenda Elisabeth GrayMB BCh, FC Paeds, DSc (hc), is a South African physician, scientist and activist specializing in the care of children and in HIV medicine. In 2012, she was awarded South Africa's highest honour, the Order of Mapungubwe (Silver). She became the first female president of the South African Medical Research Council in 2014, was recognized as one of the "100 Most Influential People" by Time in 2017 and was listed amongst "Africa's 50 Most Powerful Women" by Forbes Africa in 2020. Her research expertise involves developing microbicides for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV vaccines.
The Beckman Laser Institute is an interdisciplinary research center for the development of optical technologies and their use in biology and medicine. Located on the campus of the University of California, Irvine in Irvine, California, an independent nonprofit corporation was created in 1982, under the leadership of Michael W. Berns, and the actual facility opened on June 4, 1986. It is one of a number of institutions focused on translational research, connecting research and medical applications. Researchers at the institute have developed laser techniques for the manipulation of structures within a living cell, and applied them medically in treatment of skin conditions, stroke, and cancer, among others.
Kehar Singh is an Indian optical physicist and an emeritus fellow of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is a former CLUSTER chair professor at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and a former professor of IIT Delhi. He has also served as an academic visitor at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London.
Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop is a professor of physics at the University of Queensland and an Officer of the Order of Australia. She has led pioneering research in atom optics, laser micro-manipulation using optical tweezers, laser enhanced ionisation spectroscopy, biophysics and quantum physics.
Salome Maswime is a South African clinician and global health expert. She is an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and the Head of Global Surgery at the University of Cape Town. She advocates for women's health rights, equity in surgical and maternal care, and providing adequate health services to remote and underserved populations. She advises and consults for many institutions, including the World Health Organization. In 2017, she was honored with the Trailblazer and Young Achiever Award. She is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa.
Anita Mahadevan-Jansen is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and holds the Orrin H. Ingram Chair in Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Her research considers the development of optical techniques for clinical diagnosis and surgical guidance, particularly using Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy. She serves on the Board of Directors of SPIE, and is a Fellow of SPIE, The Optical Society, Society for Applied Spectroscopy, and the American Society for Lasers in Medicine and Surgery. She was elected to serve as the 2020 Vice President of SPIE. With her election, Mahadevan-Jansen joined the SPIE presidential chain and served as President-Elect in 2021 and the Society's President in 2022.
Laura Marcu is an American scientist and a professor of biomedical engineering and neurological surgery at the University of California, Davis. She is also a Fellow of numerous professional societies: the Biomedical Engineering Society, SPIE, The Optical Society and the National Academy of Inventors.
Nirmala "Nimmi" Ramanujam is the Robert W. Carr Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and a faculty member in the Global Health Institute and the Department of Pharmacology & Cell Biology at Duke University. She is the director of the Center of Global Women's Health Technologies (GWHT) and founder of Zenalux Biomedical Inc. and Calla Health. Ramanujam has spent the last two decades developing precision diagnostics and more recently precision therapeutics for breast and cervical cancer, with a focus on addressing global health disparities. She has more than 20 patents and over 150 publications for screening, diagnostic, and surgical applications, and has raised over $30M of funding to pursue these innovations through a variety of funding mechanisms, including NIH R01s and R21s, NIH Bioengineering Partnerships, NCI Academic Industry Partnerships, NIH Small Business grants and USAID funding. As the founding director of the Center for Global Women's Health Technologies at Duke University, she has developed a consortium of over 50+ partners including international academic institutions and hospitals, non-governmental organizations, ministries of health, and commercial partners; this consortium is working to ensure that the technologies developed at the center are adopted by cancer control programs in geographically and economically diverse healthcare settings.
Stefan Andersson-Engels is a Swedish biophysicist specializing in the field of biophotonics. He is professor at University College Cork and the deputy director of the Irish Photonics Integration Center (IPIC) within the Science Foundation Ireland. Before joining University College Cork, he was Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Lund University. He has co-founded 3 biophotonics companies Spectracure, Lumito, BioPixS. He also co-founded biannual biophotonics summer school.
Katarina Svanberg is a Swedish physician who is Professor and Chief Consultant of Oncology at the Skåne University Hospital. Her research considers the use of fluorescence-based tumour imaging and photodynamic therapy. She served as President of SPIE in 2011 and was awarded the SPIE Gold Medal in 2017.
Paras Nath Prasad is an Indian chemist. He is the SUNY Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo and holds a tenured faculty appointment in the department of Chemistry. In addition, he also holds non-tenured appointments in Physics, Medicine, and Electrical Engineering at the University at Buffalo and serves as the Executive Director of the Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics.
Michel Meunier is a professor of engineering physics and biomedical engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, a position has he held since 1986. He was recently the acting director of the Department of Engineering Physics from 2019 to 2020. He is the director of the Laser Processing and Plasmonics Laboratory (LP2L), which he founded in 1988, whose mission is to develop diagnostic and therapeutic technologies based on plasmonics and the optical properties of colloidal nanoparticles.
Igor Meglinski is a scientist studying the imaging of cells and biological tissues utilising polarised light, dynamic light scattering and computational imitation of light propagation within complex tissue-like scattering medium. He is the Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Biophotonics at Aston University and holds the Professor of Opto-Electronics and Biophotonics at Oulu University.
