In a ceremony during the BiOS Hot Topics session at SPIE Photonics West, Dr. Tayyaba Hasan was awarded the SPIE 2018 Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award
Dr. Tayyaba Hasan receives the Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award from 2018 SPIE President and SPIE Fellow and Britton Chance Award Committee Chair Bruce Tromberg at Photonics West BiOS Hot Topics
BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA, and CARDIFF, UK - Dr. Tayyaba Hasan, one of the inventors of Visudyne, the FDA-approved photodynamic treatment of age-related macular degeneration, received the 2018 SPIE Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award for contributions to the field of photodynamic therapy and its clinical translation for cancer screening and treatments. The award also recognizes her leadership and service to the photonics community.
Dr. Hasan is a professor of dermatology at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and a professor of health sciences and technology and Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her scientific efforts are focused on photochemistry-based approaches for treatment and diagnosis of disease, and the development of molecular mechanisms and image-guided combination treatment regimens. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the William Silen Lifetime Achievement in Mentoring Awards from Harvard, and the Pioneers in Biomedical Optics for Bench-to-Bedside Translation from the US National Institute of Health, both in 2009.
"She has been a force in the advancement of photomedicine," says SPIE Fellow Steven L. Jacques of Tufts University, who has worked with Hasan at the Wellman Center. "Her work on PDT has brought the method from the early days of an ill-defined photosensitizer soup prepared from bovine blood to the currently sophisticated understanding and clinical implementation of PDT with modern photosensitizers."
"Being the Britton Chance award recipient is a great honor for me," says Dr. Hasan. "Britton Chance was an inspiring renaissance man who stimulated many new ideas. It is a joy to be recognized by an award named after him and to be in the company of the distinguished previous recipients, each one of whom I hold in high esteem. In the future, I hope to see more XX chromosomal representation on this illustrious list. I am most grateful to the nominators, letter writers, SPIE, the selection committee and my team and collaborators who are the enablers of this event."
The award was presented to Dr. Hasan during the BiOS Hot Topics event, part of SPIE Photonics West, on Saturday, 27 January. After receiving the award Hasan gave a presentation entitled, "Photodynamic Therapy: the next 10 years in 10 minutes" and is presenting her research later in the week at SPIE Photonics West, with a presentation on "Broadening Photodynamic Therapy Applications to the Metastatic Setting?". She is also on the program committee for Advances in Photonics of Quantum Computing, Memory, and Communication XI and has served as a member of the conference committee for Optical Methods for Tumor Treatment and Detection: Mechanism and Techniques in Photodynamic Therapy XXVII since 2003.
The SPIE Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award is presented annually in recognition of outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of biomedical optics through the development of innovative, high-impact technologies.
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