image: Liu, right, positions the subject, Dr. Palash Bharadwaj, at the patient-friendly optoretinography (ORG) system, and carefully aligns his pupil with the imaging beam to bring the eye into optimal focus.
Credit: SPIE/Teng Liu
BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA — SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, has announced Teng Liu as the recipient of the 2026 SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship in Problem-Driven Biomedical Optics and Analytics. The annual award of $75,000 supports interdisciplinary problem-driven research and provides opportunities for translating new technologies into clinical practice for improving human health. Liu will be recognized at the Saturday evening plenary session during SPIE Photonics West, scheduled for 17 January 2026.
Liu’s research project — conducted in conjunction with University of Washington School of Medicine’s George and Martina Kren Professor of Vision Science Ramkumar Sabesan and titled “Translating Optoretinography (ORG) into a Sensitive Clinical Biomarker for Retinal Disease” — will translate optoretinography from the current proof-of-concept stage toward a clinic-ready imaging paradigm. As a non-invasive functional module add-on to standard OCT, optoretinography has the potential to greatly improve the sensitivity of retinal disease assessment and expedite the evaluation of new therapies.
This research will build on Liu’s doctoral work in developing ORG as a non-invasive measure of retinal function. This included engineering an extended field-of-view imaging platform that enables a broader range of patients with retinal conditions to be evaluated with ORG. Liu also led the first application of ORG in a longitudinal follow-up study for patients with retinitis pigmentosa, a common inherited retinal dystrophy, where functional deficits in ORG were detected much earlier compared to standard-of-care, routine clinical imaging methods.
“Receiving the SPIE–Franz Hillenkamp Fellowship is a pivotal milestone for me, both scientifically and personally,” said Liu. “It empowers me to deepen and accelerate my ongoing efforts to translate optoretinography from a laboratory technique toward a clinically viable tool for monitoring retinal health in blinding eye diseases. In the spirit of Franz Hillenkamp’s legacy of problem-driven photonics, this fellowship not only supports my research, but also gives me the opportunity to work closely with clinicians and industry partners and learn how to take responsibility for the resources that sustain our work. I am very grateful for this support, which reinforces my belief that ORG has the potential to ultimately contribute to improving care for patients with retinal disease.”
“On behalf of the SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Fellowship Committee, we are very pleased to join with SPIE in supporting Teng Liu this year,” noted Committee Co-Chairs Rox Anderson and Gabriela Apiou. “He was chosen from among an international and highly competitive group of excellent proposals with clearly promising potential for technological and clinical impact. That combination is at the heart of biomedical optics and photonics as a field and the foundation of the SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Fellowship. Furthermore, Teng Liu’s research area of interest focusing on functional imaging of eye diseases is perfectly aligned with that of Franz Hillenkamp himself. We look forward to hearing more from him and seeing the clinical outcome of this project!”
Honoring the career of medical laser pioneer Franz Hillenkamp, the SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Fellowship is a partnership between multiple international biomedical laboratories — the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, the Beckman Laser Institute, the Manstein Lab in the Cutaneous Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, Medical Laser Center Lübeck, and Boston University — and the Hillenkamp family. The endowment is funded through generous donations from the biomedical optics community, with SPIE contributing matching funds up to $1.5 million.
Applications for the 2027 SPIE-Hillenkamp Fellowship will open in the Spring of 2026.
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