Ken Hanson, a medical imaging research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and Brian Lula, president of Physik Instrumente USA, have been selected as this year’s recipients of two top awards from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
Hanson will receive the SPIE Directors’ Award in recognition of contributions to SPIE medical imaging and advances in medical image quality, restoration, and 3D reconstruction techniques.
Lula will be recognised with the SPIE President’s Award for his commitment to SPIE through outstanding service, leadership, guidance, involvement in governance, and public outreach on behalf of the society.
Both will be presented with their awards during SPIE Optics and Photonics in San Diego, California, on 9 August.
Hanson has worked at LANL since 1975, including more than 20 years in the Dynamic Testing Division where he co-developed the Bayes inference engine, the principal analysis tool for quantitative interpretation of dynamic radiographs. He also introduced other innovations, such as new approaches to assess the uncertainties in simulation codes for the verification and validation of simulations.
Although officially retired from LANL in 2016, he continues as a guest scientist in the geophysics group, working on improving ultrasound breast imaging.
Hanson also shared his expertise by developing LaTeX templates for digital publication of SPIE proceedings and journals and by teaching an SPIE course on how to write for publications in medical imaging.
Both Hanson and Lula are Fellows of SPIE. As SPIE secretary and treasurer from 2007-2014, Lula was responsible for financial oversight during a period of significant growth as well as major shifts in the global economy.
‘The society owes a debt of gratitude to Brian for his excellent stewardship of SPIE’s resources and for his insightful leadership as a member of the SPIE executive committee, board of directors, and multiple other SPIE committees since 1998,’ said SPIE president Glenn Boreman.
Lula is president of Physik Instrumente USA, a leading manufacturer of piezoceramic-based micro- and nanopositioning equipment.
