Barrington, NJ--Edmund Optics recently awarded grants in the form of product donations to undergraduate and graduate optics programs in the Americas and Asia. Grant recipients were based on application of optics in their program (technical merit) as well as innovative use of optics in a lab or research setting (innovation), and they may use their grants to purchase the company's optics, imaging lenses, or mechanics.
Americas, first place:
Mirko Zimic of the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru, who won a $10,000 grant for his low-cost microscope invention built from stock optical components that can detect tuberculosis early. The microscope will enable cytopathology screening, replacing the need of traditional Pap smear testing often unavailable to underprivileged women in remote or developing areas. Zimic's invention also enables low-cost, remote, and fast telediagnostics of endemic diseases, and his microscopes are already implemented in clinics in poverty-stricken areas of Peru.
Asia, first place:
Makoto Ohta of Tohoku University in Japan, who won a ¥800,000 grant for contributing to the development of future medical instruments focused on understanding and monitoring the blood flow status in our bodies. Blood flow is a key to understanding the mechanism of why a cerebral aneurysm and stricture breaks out and grows. Ohta's invention is to represent the blood flow status faithfully in vitro and visualize the para-blood flow made of polymer gel by using particle image velocimetry (PIV) technology. His research helps understand how to prevent a cerebral aneurysm and stricture in the future, helping to cure cardiovascular diseases.
The second-place winner for the Americas is Dan Gareau of Rockefeller University (New York, NY), who won a $7,500 grant for developing novel approaches to confocal microscopy for noninvasive methods in biomedical applications. In Asia, the second-place winner is the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CIOMP; Changchun, Jilin, China), which is currently researching novel techniques for high-power semiconductor lasers.
Third place in the Americas was awarded to Paul Yates of the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), who garnered $5,000 for his low-cost, portable, high image quality retinal cameras for teleretinal screening for eye diseases in adults. And Hans Riesen of the University of New South Wales (Canberra, Australia) won third place for Asia for a compact dosimetry system based on patented X-ray storage phosphor technology and a laser-based readout system involving an optical assembly and detector that can be incorporated into mobile phone-sized housing.
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