Li named 2016 SPIE Fellow

In the highest professional honor within the worldwide optics and photonics industry, associate professor Guoqiang Li of The Ohio State University was just named a 2016 SPIE Fellow.

Each year, the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) promotes a select few members to the status of Fellow. Read the full press release HERE.

The prestige is now reflective upon Li’s accomplishments within the areas of design, fabrication and integration of optical and electro-optic devices, which have earned him the respect of his peers.

“I feel this is a great honor for me,” he said, “I am humbled and this is just one milestone in my career."

Li is jointly appointed in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science.

The announcement of the fellowship status also serves to highlight Li’s career accomplishments. His recent work has focused on designing the next-generation optical and electro-optic devices for vision correction, ophthalmic imaging, and general biomedical optical imaging.

By creating switchable lenses for the correction of presbyopia (farsightedness caused by aging), Li has generated significant impact in the world. Both the National Institutes of Health and the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation have supported his research funding through grants.

Standing in the lobby of Ohio State’s ElectroScience Laboratory on Kinnear Road, Li held out his recent creation - a nearly invisible circular lens sandwiched between two sections of glass that represents his further improvement of active lenses, providing customized sight correction by adapting to the individual automatically. He is also developing passive adaptive lenses based on wavefront engineering for vision correction.

“Exploitation of novel electro-optic materials (liquid crystals) is also needed for the active lenses,” Li said.

Over the years, the professor has built several advanced 3D optical imaging systems by combining cutting-edge technologies, such as confocal, optical coherence tomography, second harmonic generation, photo-acoustic, wide-field microscope, and dynamic holographic techniques.

“(I’m) trying to promote inter-disciplinary research that provides innovative technologies for improving vision and rapid, noninvasive, high-resolution imaging tools for detecting and preventing eye diseases,” Li said.

The professor was also involved in the development of the most recent confocal scanning laser polarimeter, used for the detection of glaucoma, as well as the development of the first updatable holographic stereograms.

As SPIE guidelines explain, “Fellows are members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics and imaging. They are honored for their technical achievement, for their service to the general optics community and to SPIE in particular.”

To date, just over 1,000 members have become Fellows since SPIE’s inception in 1955. ECE professor and department associate chair, Betty Lise Anderson, was also named a SPIE Fellow in 2015.