Professor Park Yong-geun (pictured) of the Department of Physics at KAIST, who pioneered the field of “holotomography,” which enables three-dimensional observation of living cells and tissues without staining, has received the most prestigious global award in biophotonics.

On the 2nd, KAIST announced that Professor Park had been named the recipient of the “Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award.” Biophotonics is an advanced interdisciplinary research field that uses light to observe cells and tissues with high precision and to diagnose and treat diseases.

The award received by Professor Park has previously gone to leading global scholars who established the core technologies of this field. Established in 2012, it comprehensively evaluates contributions ranging from the advancement of fundamental optics and the establishment of theoretical frameworks to the development of cutting-edge instrumentation and the expansion of clinical research.

Professor Park is a leading authority in holotomography, which precisely reconstructs internal cellular structures and physical properties by using changes in the refractive index of light. He is credited with opening the era of precise “three-dimensional label-free” imaging that does not damage cells, unlike fluorescent staining and similar techniques.

Professor Park has further extended his work by combining cell and tissue imaging with artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically analyze and classify cells. Beyond this, he proposed a new approach that identifies key structures such as collagen fibers within cancerous tissue without staining, by exploiting direction-dependent light responses. These research results have been published in international journals including Nature Reviews, Nature Photonics, and Nature Cell Biology. Professor Park stated, “Through physics-based label-free imaging and AI technology, I intend to contribute to solving unresolved problems in life sciences and medicine.”

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