06/10/2025
In a special seminar to be held on the Sabancı University Tuzla Campus on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, at 11:00 a.m., UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) faculty member Prof. Dr. Aydoğan Özcan will present the latest research on the fusion of AI and optics with his presentation entitled "The Fusion of AI and Optics for Computational Microscopy and Sensing."
The Era of Biological Testing with Smartphones
In this special seminar, to be held at Sabancı University FENS G032, Prof. Aydoğan Özcan will share with participants the innovations in AI-assisted optical methods in biomedical research and diagnostic processes.
One of the main topics of the seminar is digital coloring of tissue samples. Thanks to next-generation microscopy techniques developed using deep neural networks, tissue samples can be digitally colored without the need for traditional coloring methods. This allows for fast, economical, and environmentally friendly solutions. Innovations that enable biological tests to be performed in just 15 minutes with smartphone-based biosensors will also be discussed.
Prof. Dr. Aydoğan Özcan
Dr. Özcan is the Chancellor’s Professor and the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Innovation at UCLA and an HHMI Professor with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is also the Associate Director of the California NanoSystems Institute. He is elected a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a Fellow of National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He holds over 85 patents in microscopy, holography, computational imaging, sensing, mobile diagnostics, nonlinear optics, and fiber optics. He is also the author of a book and co-author of over 1,300 peer-reviewed publications in leading scientific journals and conferences. Dr. Özcan has received many awards for his pioneering contributions to computational imaging, sensing, and diagnostics, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the ICO Prize by the International Commission for Optics, the Dennis Gabor Award, the Joseph Fraunhofer Award and the Robert M. Burley Prize (Optica), the Rahmi Koç Medal of Science, the Keith Terasaki Innovation Award, the SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, the SPIE Early Career Achievement Award, the Army Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, the Navy Young Investigator Award, the IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award and Distinguished Lecturer Award, the National Geographic Emerging Explorer Award, the Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Award from the National Academy of Engineering, and the TR 35 Award from MIT. He is elected a Member of Optica, AAAS, SPIE, IEEE, AIMBE, RSC, APS and the Guggenheim Foundation, and is a Lifetime Fellow Member of Optica. Dr. Özcan is also listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Web of Science and Clarivate.
