Edmund Optics® Announces 2020 Educational Award and Norman Edmund Award Recipients

Edmund Optics^® (EO), the premier provider of optical and imaging components, announces the recipients of its 2020 Educational Award program. This award is given in recognition of outstanding undergraduate and graduate optics research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs at non-profit colleges and universities worldwide.

$45,000 USD in Edmund Optics products will be awarded to the Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners in the Americas and Europe to support their research. The remaining twenty-four finalists will receive a $500 product award. The recipient of the Norman Edmund Inspiration Award, which best embodies the legacy of Edmund Optics’ founder, Norman Edmund, is also chosen from the 30 global finalists and will receive an additional $5,000 in Edmund Optics products.

Meet the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Award Recipients

In the Americas, the Gold Award was awarded to Shravan Gupta at University of Rochester, USA for the development of a label-free breast cancer screening tool for surgical pathologists to reduce misdiagnosis of breast biopsies using quantitative confocal phase microscopy.

The Silver Award was awarded to Christian Jennings at University of Texas at Austin, USA for the construction of a novel flow cytometer that combines nonlinear broadband coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering spectroscopy and real-time deformability cytometry to holistically evaluate individual pancreatic cancer cells.

The Bronze Award was awarded to Damian Presti of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina for the development of a low-cost biophotonic device capable of detecting COVID-19 in low-income settings.

In Europe, the Gold Award was awarded to Sammy Florczak of UMC Utrecht, The Netherlands for the development of a 3D volumetric printing process to enable the fast fabrication of advanced cell-laden scaffolds to repair tissues and organs.

The Silver Award was awarded to Justyna Labuz of Jagiellonian University, Poland for the development of a real time detection device for UV and visible light induced chloroplast movements through simultaneous recording of changes in red light transmittance and reflectance of plant leaves.

The Bronze Award was awarded to Paulo Lourenço of Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa, Portugal for the development of a point-of-care detection platform prototype for acute kidney injury, based on a photonic integrated circuit containing an array of interferometric plasmonic sensors.

Meet the Norman Edmund Inspiration Award Recipient

The Norman Edmund Inspiration Award was awarded to Yi Zuo at University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA for training undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers in instrumentation for biomedical applications. Many of their trainees have grown into the next generation of engineers, researchers, and faculty who work in optical and biomedical research worldwide.

To learn more about the Educational Award recipients and their applications, please visit www.edmundoptics.com/award.

About Edmund Optics:

Edmund Optics^® (EO) is a leading global supplier of optics, imaging, and photonics technology that has served a variety of markets including Life Sciences, Biomedical, Industrial Inspection, Semiconductor, R&D, and Defense since 1942. Customers can purchase items by calling 1-800-363-1992, via the catalog, or on the website at www.edmundoptics.com.