The 21 award recipients represent an exciting range of stellar achievements across light-based sciences and technologies

Today, the Awards Committee of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, announced the recipients of its prestigious annual awards. Honoring transformative advancements across a range of professional areas — including medicine, astronomy, lithography, optical metrology, optical design, and community leadership — the Society's awards recognize technical accomplishments as well as committed service to SPIE and support of its organizational mission.

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2025 SPIE Gold Medal recipient Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop. (Photo: Mark Graham)

SPIE Gold Medal: Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop For innovations in the transfer of optical angular momentum to matter, using sculpted light for laser manipulation on atomic, nano- and microscales, and providing a powerful probe to biomedicine.

SPIE President's Award: Bernard Kress For service of outstanding benefit to photonics, micro-optics, and wearable displays, and for energetic, creative contributions to SPIE conferences, education, and governance.

SPIE Directors' Award: Jess Wade For public-engagement work in STEM, for championing women in physics, and for tackling systemic biases surrounding race and gender.

SPIE Mozi Award: F. Javier García de Abajo For seminal contributions to confined optical polaritons, their interaction with free electrons, and applications in nonlinear nanophotonics, optical sensing, and ultrafast processes in condensed-matter systems.

SPIE Aden and Marjorie Meinel Technology Achievement Award: John Ballato For pioneering contributions to the invention, maturation, and application of semiconductor optoelectronic fibers.

SPIE A.E. Conrady Award in Optical Engineering: Jannick P. Rolland For pioneering contributions to the development and application of freeform optics.

SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award: Kirill Larin For groundbreaking contributions in the field of optical coherence elastography (OCE) with significant impact in biology, medicine, and biomedical optics.

SPIE Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award: Ruikang Wang For transformative advances in biophotonics and imaging that have significantly enhanced the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases, thereby improving patient quality of life.

SPIE Chandra S. Vikram Award in Optical Metrology: Katherine Creath For lifetime achievement in optical metrology and optical testing, with pioneering contributions in speckle interferometry, phase measurement techniques, interferometer design, and algorithm development.

SPIE Dennis Gabor Award in Diffractive Optics: Zeev Zalevsky For significant contributions to the field of diffractive optics and holography, particularly in super-resolved imaging and imaging through scattering media.

SPIE Diversity Outreach Award: Rosario Porras-Aguilar For contributions to diversity and outreach in optics and photonics, from education initiatives that inspire students across the globe to fostering inclusivity within the scientific community.

SPIE Early Career Achievement Award — Academic Focus: Deep Jariwala For pioneering contributions towards understanding strong light-matter interactions in quantum-confined excitonic and magnetic semiconductors, and for the development of excitonic metamaterials.

SPIE Early Career Achievement Award — Academic Focus: Jenna Mueller For innovative strategies to decrease cancer mortality in marginalized communities, including work on the Pocket colposcope, an FDA-approved cervical-cancer screening device, and developing a low-cost laparoscope.

SPIE Early Career Achievement Award — Industry/Government Focus: Frédéric Bouchard For work on temporal encoding and ultrafast temporal interferometric networks, representing a significant advancement in quantum-information processing, with future applications in quantum computing and networking.

SPIE Frits Zernike Award for Microlithography: Henry I. Smith For seminal contributions in nanolithography, including the invention of phase-shifting masks, demonstration of liquid-immersion lithography, achromatic-interference lithography, zone-plate array lithography, and his impact as an educator.

SPIE G. G. Stokes Award in Optical Polarization: Thomas G. Brown For foundational work on structured polarization and the effects of stress-induced birefringence on beam polarization and intensity, waveguide modes, and point-spread functions.

SPIE Harold E. Edgerton Award in High-Speed Optics: Liang Gao For pioneering advancements in ultrafast optical techniques and their transformative applications in transient imaging at multiple scales.

SPIE Harrison H. Barrett Award in Medical Imaging: Martin Yaffe For pioneering technical advances in medical imaging, particularly for the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer.

SPIE Maria Goeppert Mayer Award in Photonics: Pavel Cheben For pioneering contributions to silicon photonic waveguide devices, including the invention of metamaterial waveguides and advancing sub-wavelength integrated photonics technology.

SPIE María J. Yzuel Educator Award: Dan Curticapean For a lifelong dedication to teaching optics and photonics with infectious passion, and a lifelong dedication to the SPIE community.

SPIE Rudolf and Hilda Kingslake Award in Optical Design: Haiyin Sun In recognition of four decades of contributions to optical design, including engineering and measurements, laser-diode applications, optical-literature publications, and service to the optical-design community.

The complete listing of the SPIE Society Awards and recipients is available here.

About SPIE

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, brings engineers, scientists, students, and business professionals together to advance light-based science and technology. The Society, founded in 1955, connects and engages with our global constituency through industry-leading conferences and exhibitions; publications of conference proceedings, books, and journals in the SPIE Digital Library; and career-building opportunities. Over the past five years, we have invested more than $25 million in the international optics community through our advocacy and support, including scholarships, educational resources, travel grants, endowed gifts, and public-policy development. www.spie.org.

Daneet Steffens Public Relations Manager daneets@spie.org +1 360 685 5478 @spie.org