Keisuke Goda: The 2021 SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award

SPIE Fellow Keisuke Goda engages in diverse areas of research not easily classified within the traditional framework of physics, chemistry, and biology. He started his career as a gravitational wave physicist during his doctoral studies, working with Professor Rainer Weiss and Nergis Mavalvala on the development of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, while also participating in biophotonics research at the G.R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory. At UCLA, as a post-doc and research associate, Goda worked on the development of ultrafast optical imaging and spectroscopy and microfluidic biotechnology with Professors Bahram Jalai and Dino Di Carlo. He joined the University of Tokyo's (UTokyo) chemistry department in 2012; he is also an adjunct professor at UCLA and the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University. Goda's group at UTokyo develops technologies based on molecular imaging and spectroscopy together with nanotechnology, microfluidics, and artificial intelligence. The team exploits new applications by integrating theoretical, experimental, and computational techniques in physics and chemistry combined with molecular cell biology, electrical engineering, computer science, biomedical engineering, applied mathematics, and mechanical engineering.

In addition to giving multiple plenaries at SPIE conferences since 2015, Goda is a member of the Executive Organizing Committee and conference chair for SPIE Photonics West's BiOS track; a co-chair of SPIE Photonics Asia's Real-Time Photonic Measurements, Data Management, and Processing conference; and a program-committee member of the SPIE Photonics West LASE conference, Real-Time Measurements, Rogue Events, and Emerging Applications. He is currently the faculty advisor of UTokyo's SPIE Student Chapter which he helped launch in 2017.

"I have been familiar with Keisuke's work for over a decade since we collaborated on a quantitative phase imaging project in the G. R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory at MIT," says the Beckman Institute's Gabriel Popescu. "Back then, he was a member of LIGO, which later won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the detection of gravitational waves to which he made significant contributions through his quantum-enhancement work. Since then, he has made impressive progress at the interface of ultrafast optical technologies and microfluidics for large-scale, single-cell analysis. It is not an overstatement to say that he is an extremely innovative and talented scientist who has already made significant contributions to biophotonics community — and will continue to do so."

Meet the other 2021 SPIE Society Award winners.

Read more about Keisuke Goda and the SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award.