Professor James G. Fujimoto obtained his bachelors, masters, and doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, 1981, and 1984, respectively. His doctoral research was under Prof. Erich Ippen in the area of ultrafast optics. He is currently the Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering and on the faculty of the Research Laboratory of Electronics and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at M.I.T.  His research interests include femtosecond laser technology and biomedical optical imaging. He has co-founded two companies, Advanced Ophthalmic Devices (acquired by Carl Zeiss) and Light Lab Imaging, Inc., (acquired by Goodman, Ltd and St. Jude Medical).

Dr. Fujimoto’s group and collaborators were responsible for the invention and development of optical coherence tomography (OCT), and were the first to develop OCT in clinical ophthalmology at the New England Eye Center. He has been an influential educator and has trained numerous leading researchers in the field of photonics and biophotonics.

He has served as program/general co-chair for several conferences like the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO), SPIE BIOS symposium and the European Conferences on Biomedical Optics. He also served as Director of the Optical Society of America and is the current Director of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE).

Awards received – Discover Magazine Award for Technological Innovation in medical diagnostics, Rank Prize in Optoelectronics, Zeiss Research Award, and Champalimaud Vision Prize.

Memberships – National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Fujimoto is also a Fellow of the OSA, APS, and IEEE.