Andreas H. Hielscher received his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University, Houston, Texas, in 1995. After spending 2 years as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, he joined the faculty at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. In September 2001 he moved to Columbia University in New York City, where he is now the Director of the Biophotonics and Optical Radiology Laboratory. He holds joint appointments as Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology.
Dr. Hielscher made pioneering contribution in the field of Biomedical Optics. His work currently focuses on the development of state-of-the-art imaging software and hardware for optical tomography. He applies this emerging technology to imaging of cancer and joint diseases and uses it in support of drug development. He has published over 120 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conference proceedings. Dr. Hielscher’s work has been funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLB), the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), the Whitaker Foundation for Biomedical Engineering, and the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research.
Dr. Hielscher currently serves as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions of Medical Imaging and has reviewed papers for over 30 scientific journals, including the Journal of Biomedical Optics, Optics Letters, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Medical Physics, Physics Review Letters, and Review of Scientific Instrumentation. He has been active in organizing conferences and meetings that promote the field of Biomedical Optics on more than 30 occasions. Among others, he was Chair of the Biomedical Optical Spectroscopy Group at the Optical Society of America (OSA) from October 2001 – 2003, and chaired symposia and sessions on optical imaging at the IEEE –EMBS conferences in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2005. Currently he is the publication chair for the upcoming annual IEEE-EMBS conference to be held from August 30 to September 3, 2006, in New York City. His is also a member of the SPIE Medical Imaging Conference Program Committee on "Physiology, Function, and Structure from Medical Images,” and the OSA Conference Program Committee for “Advances in Optical Imaging and Photon Migration.” In addition he frequently serves on review panels for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) as well as several international funding agencies, such as the British Welcome Trust or Dutch Organization for Scientific Research. He is listed in Marquis Who’s is Who in America since 2005.