Awards, Honors & Grants

Bpifrance — France 2030

Chae was selected as a national laureate of i-PhD, the French government's deeptech innovation contest operated by Bpifrance under France 2030, for the AoPolar project. Congratulations!

Falling Walls Lab Paris

Chae won first place at Falling Walls Lab Paris for the pitch "Breaking the Wall of Blind Brain Surgery". Congratulations!

Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale — Nature Conferences, Paris

Chae received the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (FRM) Young Researcher Award at the Nature Conferences "Redefining Healthcare in the Age of AI" in Paris for his work on machine learning across the intraoperative polarimetric imaging pipeline for brain tumour resection. Congratulations!

Electro Optics, Optatec 2026

Shortlisted in the Biophotonics and medical applications category for a miniaturised wide-field imaging Mueller polarimetry system for neurosurgical microscopes, designed and built at LPICM, that visualises brain tissue microstructure in real time to help delineate tumour boundaries during surgery.

SPIE Photonics Europe, Strasbourg

Chae won the Best Student Paper Presentation Award at SPIE Photonics Europe 2026 for "Fibrillar collagen organization mapping from imaging Mueller polarimetry data using SHG-guided machine learning". Congratulations!

COST Action CA21159 PhoBioS

Chae was granted a research exchange visit to Dan Elson's Lab at Imperial College London. Congratulations!

SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco

Arthur won the Best Student Paper Award for the paper "Strategies for correcting plastic cover–induced artifacts in Mueller polarimetric imaging during neurosurgery". Congratulations!

SPIE

Chae was granted fellowship support to present at SPIE Photonics West 2026 in San Francisco. Congratulations!

E4H

Théotim was granted fellowship support to present at SPIE Photonics West 2026 in San Francisco. Congratulations!

Hi! PARIS, Institut Polytechnique de Paris

Polarimetric Real-time Imaging and Simulation using Mueller Matrix Imaging Platform for Neurosurgery (2026–2028).

4th International Workshop on BioPhotonics and Optical Angular Momentum

Chae won the Optica Best Student Poster Award at the 4th International Workshop on BioPhotonics and Optical Angular Momentum. Congratulations!

Institut Polytechnique de Paris / École Polytechnique

Chae won the IP Paris Three Minute Thesis competition, the inter-university final, and the People's Choice Award. Congratulations!

SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco

Demelza won the Best Student Paper Award for "Uncertainty-aware Mueller matrix polarimetry using Gaussian process pipeline". Congratulations!

E4H

Chae was granted fellowship support to present at SPIE Photonics West 2025 in San Francisco. Congratulations!

E4H

Chae was granted a three-month exchange at the Medical Photonics Laboratory with Prof. Jessica Ramella Roman at FIU. Congratulations!

Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR)

Scientific partner in OptiSkin, a multi-modality and multi-scale optical characterisation and modelling project for human skin applied to cancer diagnosis (2025–2029).

Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR)

French coordinator for MULTIFUSE on advanced multimodal sensing and data fusion for early digital detection of plant stress symptoms (2025–2028).

SPIE Photonics Europe, Strasbourg

Éléa Gros won the Best Student Paper Award for "Assessment of polarimetric properties in brain tumors employing wide-field imaging Mueller polarimetry", joint work with AOPLab. Congratulations!

Institut Polytechnique de Paris

Prospective studies on a real-time imaging Mueller polarimetric guidance system for neurosurgery combining Monte Carlo simulation and machine learning (2024–2027).

Campus France

French PI for PHAETHON on photon time-of-flight measurements in brain tissues for medical diagnosis — experiments and modelling (2024–2025).

SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco

Éléa Gros won the Best Student Paper Award for "Evolution of polarimetric parameters of cadaver brain tissue with time and formaldehyde fixation in wide-field Mueller matrix images", joint work with AOPLab. Congratulations!

European Optical Society

Dr. Novikova received the EOS Prize for the best 2022 paper published in the Journal of the European Optical Society – Rapid Publications, for optical diagnosis of gastric tissue biopsies with Mueller microscopy and statistical analysis.

SPIE

Dr. Novikova was elected Fellow of SPIE in recognition of her distinguished contributions to Mueller polarimetry and its biomedical applications.

Engineering for Health (E4H) Annual Forum, IP Paris

Omar Rodríguez-Núñez won the Poster Prize for "Wide-field imaging Mueller polarimetry for the visualization of brain fiber tracts during neurosurgery". Congratulations!

Swiss National Science Foundation

French co-PI of HORAO on polarimetric visualisation of healthy brain fiber tracts for tumour delineation during neurosurgery — the lab's largest collaborative grant (2022–2026).

Campus France

French PI for AURORA on digital histology of tissue with Mueller microscopy and machine learning (2022–2023).

Optica (formerly OSA)

Dr. Novikova was elected Fellow of Optica in recognition of her significant contributions to Mueller polarimetry and its applications in biomedical imaging and optical metrology.

SPIE

Dr. Novikova received the SPIE G.G. Stokes Award — the field's highest honour for contributions to optical polarization — in recognition of her outstanding work in Mueller polarimetry and its biomedical applications.

École Polytechnique

Visualisation of the exact border between tumour and healthy brain by Mueller polarimetry during neurosurgery (2020–2022).

Campus France PHC Dumont d'Urville

French PI for POLANNs on non-invasive polarimetric diagnostics of biological tissues aided by artificial neural networks (2019–2020).

Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR)

Polarimetric instrumentation for overlay measurements in microelectronics — one of the lab's foundational large grants (2009–2011).