Wang receives honorary doctorate from Lund University

Lihong Wang, PhD, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University in Sweden.

Wang

Lihong Wang, PhD, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University in Sweden. Wang, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has been one of the prominent figures in developing photoacoustic imaging technology in biomedicine, says Stefan Andersson-Engels, professor of atomic physics at Lund University.

Wang, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has been one of the prominent figures in developing photoacoustic imaging technology in biomedicine, says Stefan Andersson-Engels, professor of atomic physics at Lund University.

“His groundbreaking and internationally recognized research has played a major role for many of those in physics, medicine and engineering who work in this field,” Andersson-Engels says.

Wang also is a regular guest lecturer at Lund University, which recently began an interdisciplinary advanced study group called Multiple Imaging Modalities for Improved Care (MIMIC), based on Wang’s technology.

Lund University also awarded Leslie Banks-Sills of Tel Aviv University an honorary doctorate for her work developing smart composites.

A leading researcher on new methods of cancer imaging, Wang has received more than 30 research grants as the principal investigator with a cumulative budget of more than $40 million. His research on non-ionizing biophotonic imaging has been supported by the NIH, National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Defense, The Whitaker Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Wang and his lab were the founders of a new type of medical imaging that gives physicians a new look at the body’s internal organs, publishing the first paper on the technique in 2003. Called functional photoacoustic tomography, the technique relies on light and sound to create detailed, color pictures of tumors deep inside the body and may eventually help doctors diagnose cancer earlier than is now possible and to more precisely monitor the effects of cancer treatment — all without the radiation involved in X-rays and CT scans or the expense of MRIs.

In September 2013, Wang received a 2013 Transformative Research Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The prior year, he received one of 10 NIH Director’s Pioneer Awards from among 600 applicants. The award supports individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering — and possibly transforming — approaches to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research. He also has received the NIH FIRST, the NSF’s CAREER Award, the Optical Society’s C. E. K. Mees Medal and IEEE’s Technical Achievement Award for seminal contributions to photoacoustic tomography and Monte Carlo modeling of photon transport in biological tissues and for leadership in the international biophotonics community.