Strategies in Biophotonics features newsmakers

As we are putting the finishing touches on the Sept/Oct issue of BioOptics World, I am getting jazzed about Strategies in Biophotonics—because I'm realizing how many of the newsmakers in biophotonics will be there.

For instance, our issue carries a feature article on an exciting new application of micro-OCT, pioneeered in the lab of Gary Tearney, MD, Ph.D., who will present a keynote address on Wednesday morning.

Another article covers Nanobiosym, whose founder, Anita Goel, MD, Ph.D., will be a featured speaker, following the keynote address by lauded engineer, entrepreneur, and MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer, DSc.

Goel's talk is only one of the presentations on mobile health; another will be they keynote given by newly minted HHMI Professor Aydogan Ozcan, Ph.D., of UCLA and Holomic LLC.

Other speakers whose work is featured in the issue include Ethan Schonbrun, Ph.D., of The Rowland Institute at Harvard, who will demonstrate a microfluidic and optical spectroscopy technology for measuring blood sugar. Schonbrun's demo is part of the Innovators' Demo Stage, a new addition to the conference program. This is an area for developers to show off photonics/optics-based biomedical systems and devices that are aiming for commercialization or else newly launched. Other participants include:

• Kendall Research Systems will demo FireFly, an ultralight wirelessly powered and controlled headstage system for chronic, freely behaving optogenetics research;
• Infrared Imaging Inc. will demo Vein-Eye, a unit that illuminates the veins in the arm for accurate and quick needle punctures;
• Rockefeller University researcher will demonstrate a camera for skin cancer (melanoma) detection; and
  
• GestSure will demo a touchless interface that allows surgeons to control their operating room computers while scrubbed, by making simple hand gestures.