Dr Sarah Bohndiek awarded SPIE Early Career Achievement Award

The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) presented Dr Sarah Bohndiek with a 2019 SPIE Early Career Achievement Award yesterday. Bohndiek was recognized at the SPIE Fellows Luncheon during the Society’s annual Photonics West Symposium in San Francisco.

The SPIE Early Career Achievement Awards recognize young professionals’ significant and innovative technical contributions in engineering or scientific fields of relevance to SPIE, honoring excellence in academia and industry/government. Dr Bohndiek has made significant advances in molecular imaging for cancer research with her pioneering work on optical imaging & spectroscopy.

Bohndiek is currently a Junior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute; a Fellow of Corpus Christi College; and a University lecturer in the Physics department, all at the University of Cambridge. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University’s School of Medicine in 2013.

Sarah has distinguished herself as a very prolific scientist, and an outstanding scholar and educator.

Prof Laura Marcu, University of California

As a graduate student at University College London, Bohndiek studied radiation physics, assessing and exploiting the capabilities of the then newly emerging CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) sensors for X-ray imaging.

She developed new testing methodologies for these non-linear devices, and presented her findings at SPIE Photonics West 2007. Between 2008 and 2011, she studied magnetic resonance imaging at the University of Cambridge, making major contributions to the imaging of metabolism using hyperpolarized carbon-13: of her papers from that period, six have been cited more than 50 times.

 

 

“Sarah has distinguished herself as a very prolific scientist, and an outstanding scholar and educator,” says Laura Marcu, SPIE Fellow and Professor at the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery, at the University of California, Davis. “She is an exceptional individual who combines an enthusiasm for fundamental questions in optical sciences applied to biology and medicine with an amazing intellectual capacity that spans many different fields.”

She’s established an ambitious program that simultaneously advances cutting-edge molecular imaging technologies and translates them to the clinic.

Prof Bruce Tromberg, Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering

Today, Bohndiek is developing biomedical imaging techniques to improve cancer patient management. Her unique perspective, built through training in physics, biochemistry and radiology, has lead to Dr Bohndiek’s reputation as an emerging multidisciplinary research leader in her field.

“Sarah is a rising star in our field,” notes SPIE Fellow and National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering director Bruce Tromberg. “She’s established an ambitious program that simultaneously advances cutting-edge molecular imaging technologies and translates them to the clinic. Sarah has also made outstanding contributions to scientific outreach through significant public engagement activities, media appearances, and an online blog. She has a growing international reputation as an exceptionally creative scientist who is able to work at the interface between new technology development, modeling and computation, and clinical translational research.”

Multispectral Endoscopy for Early Detection of Oesophageal Cancer

Dr Bohndiek has previously been featured together with collaborators Prof. Rebecca Fitzgerald and Dr Massimiliano di Pietro on BBC Look East news to discuss a clinical trial in patients with Barrett’s oesophagus. The Bohndiek Group will be testing the potential of a new multispectral imaging camera to detect cancer earlier.