Biomedical Optics Express (BOEx) is the principal interdisciplinary outlet for serving the biomedical optics and biophotonics communities, publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed research related to optics, photonics, and optical imaging in biomedicine and biology. Over the years, BOEx has attracted submissions from active scientists at all stages of their careers. We are delighted to announce the introduction of a prize to recognize the best paper in the past three years and its inaugural winner.

The prize recognizes the authors of a paper that a committee of BOEx editors judged to be outstanding. The selection committee was chaired by the Deputy Editor and consisted of associate editors, Drs. Audrey Bowden, Yali Jia, Peter Kner, Igor Meglinski, and Nicholas Smith, who represent a range of topics across the scope of BOEx. They were responsible for identifying a winner from among all the papers published between 2019 and 2021 based on criteria including the scientific significance, quality, and presentation of the results. The selection task was particularly difficult since the article had to be selected from approximately 1,500 papers.

The inaugural winning article, “Fast, volumetric live-cell imaging using high-resolution light-field microscopy” was written by a team led by Shu Jia from Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University [1]. Haoyu Li and Changliang Guo were the co-first authors of this article. The paper reports a high-resolution light-field microscopy (HR-LFM) system for live-cell imaging with a resolution of 300-700 nm in all three dimensions, an imaging depth of several micrometers, and a volume acquisition time of milliseconds. The authors showed the feasibility of the technique by imaging various cellular dynamics and structures and tracking single particles. The technique may promise LFM as a particularly useful tool for understanding biological systems at multiple spatio-temporal levels. The selection committee felt that the thoroughness of the study, the clarity of presentation, and the significance of the work were particularly impressive.

Shu Jia

The lead author, Dr. Shu Jia, is currently an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. He completed postdoctoral training at Harvard University and received Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. His research program is focused on biophotonics and imaging technologies for broad biomedical applications. Dr. Jia is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, and NIH MIRA Award.

Haoyu Li and Chanliang Guo

Dr. Haoyu Li and Dr. Changliang Guo were co-first authors of this article. They both received their Ph.D. in Optical Engineering at University College Dublin, Ireland, and then completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Shu Jia. Dr. Li is currently a Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology and Dr. Guo is an Associate Investigator at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Peking University.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Shu Jia and his colleagues on their selection as the winners of the 2022 BOEx Best Paper Prize!