Winner of Ocean Optics’ 2017 Young Investigator Award Announced

Ocean Optics has announced the winner of the annual Young Investigator Award, which is sponsored by the company. Lauren D. Field of the United States Naval Research Laboratory was named the winner during SPIE BiOS / Photonics West 2017.

The Young Investigator Award is presented to a researcher who is a graduate student or has completed their graduate work in the last five years. The recipient must be the primary author of the best juried paper submitted as part of the ‘Colloidal Nanocrystals for Biomedical Applications XII’ symposium. Cash prizes are awarded to the winner and runner-up, with grants of Ocean Optics equipment made to the laboratories where the work was performed.

Field was honoured for the paper titled ‘Semiconductor quantum dots as Foerster resonance energy transfer donors for intracellularly-based biosensors’, co-authored by Scott A. Walper (US Naval Research Lab), Kimihiro Susumu (Sotera Defense Solutions Inc), Eunkeu Oh (Sotera Defense Solutions Inc), Igor L. Medintz (US Naval Research Lab), and James B. Delehanty (US Naval Research Lab). The award was presented by Ocean Optics’ Director of Sales (US), Alan Wells, and Colloidal Nanoparticles for Biomedical Applications conference co-chairs Dr Wolfgang Parak (Philipps-University Marburg) and Dr Marek Osinski (The University of New Mexico).

Thorben Badur (Philipps-University Marburg), lead investigator of the paper entitled ‘Photochemical generation of antimicrobial Ag-nanoparticles in intraocular lenses’ was recognised as runner-up. That paper was co-authored with Hee-Cheol Kim (Philipps-University Marburg), and Norbert A. Hampp (Philipps-University Marburg).

Ocean Optics has sponsored the Young Investigator Award since 2005 and has long supported young scientists from around the world through sponsorships, grant programmes and partnerships.