UCLA Samueli Announces 2024 V.M. Watanabe Excellence in Research Award
Every year, the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering selects and recognizes outstanding achievements by a number of its alumni, faculty members and students who have excelled in various fields. Below is the profile of the 2024 V. M. Watanabe Excellence in Research Award recipient.
V.M. Watanabe Excellence in Research Award
Aydogan Ozcan
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Bioengineering
Aydogan Ozcan is UCLA’s Volgenau Chair for Engineering Innovation, with faculty appointments in the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Bioengineering departments. His research focuses on photonics, lens-free computational microscopy, cytometry, sensing and diagnostic systems to improve biomedical applications, such as telemedicine and global health. In particular, Ozcan is dedicated to the democratization of medical technologies and services. He is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and holds more than 75 issued patents in microscopy, holography, computational imaging, sensing, mobile diagnostics, and nonlinear and fiber optics.
Ozcan is an associate director of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA and a professor with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has authored a book and co-authored more than 1,000 peer-reviewed publications in leading scientific and conference journals. Ozcan has been named a Highly Cited Researcher and recognized with many honors, including a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, an International Commission for Optics Prize, a Joseph Fraunhofer Award, a Dennis Gabor Award, a Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, a Rahmi Koc Science Medal, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and a National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award for his contributions to computational imaging, sensing and diagnostics.