Simon Mahler Awarded 2024 SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship

Simon Mahler, a postdoctoral scholar research associate in electrical engineering, has received the 2024 SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship in Problem-Driven Biomedical Optics and Analytics from the international society for optics and photonics. The annual award "supports interdisciplinary problem-driven research and provides opportunities for translating new technologies into clinical practice for improving human health."

Mahler's research—conducted in the Biophotonics Lab of Changuei Yang, Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Medical Engineering; Investigator, Heritage Medical Research Institute—will focus on "designing a multi-channel device, using infrared laser speckle imaging, that non-invasively monitors cerebral blood flow in the human head across several locations simultaneously," which could potentially advance medical applications like the diagnosis of concussions. 

First awarded in 2018, Mahler is the first Caltech recipient of the SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship. Leanne Chu, the Director of Foundation Relations in the Caltech Office of Foundation Relations, assisted Mahler in applying for this fellowship. [Read the full press release]