Laura Waller
Canadian computer scientist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Laura Ann Waller is a Canadian-American computer scientist and the Ted Van Duzer Endowed Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where she directs the Computational Imaging Lab.[2][3] Her research focuses on computational imaging, developing techniques that integrate optical hardware design with computational processing to advance microscopy and phase imaging. She is a Fellow of The Optical Society and a senior fellow of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science.[4]
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Laura Waller | |
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Waller speaks at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Data, Society and Inference Seminar in 2015 | |
| Born | Laura Ann Waller |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (BS, MEng, PhD) |
| Awards | National Science Foundation CAREER Award Adolph Lomb Medal (2021) |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley Berkeley Institute for Data Science Princeton University University of Cambridge |
| Thesis | Computational phase imaging based on intensity transport (2010) |
| Doctoral advisor | George Barbastathis[1] |
| Website | laurawaller |
Early life and education
Waller grew up in Kingston, Ontario, where she attended Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School.[5][6] She pursued all three of her degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science in 2004 and a Master's degree in 2005.[5] During her undergraduate studies, she spent a year at the University of Cambridge as part of the Cambridge–MIT Institute.[5] Her Master's thesis examined the design of feedback loops and experimental testing techniques for integrated optics.[5]
While at MIT, Waller was active in campus life: she played on the Women's Varsity soccer team, served as president of The Optical Society student chapter, and participated in the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) programme.[7][8][9]
She completed her doctorate in 2010 under the supervision of George Barbastathis, with a thesis that developed new techniques to image phase and amplitude.[10][1]
Career and research
Following her doctorate, Waller joined Princeton University in 2010 as a research associate and lecturer.[9] She moved to the University of California, Berkeley in 2012, where she was awarded tenure in 2016.[11]
Waller's research group specialises in computational imaging, an approach that integrates optical system design with computational processing.[3][12] Their work spans phase imaging, super-resolution microscopy, and lensless imaging, with applications in both biomedical and industrial sciences.[13][14][15] She has developed machine learning techniques for 3D microscopy and her group maintains open source software for imaging applications.[16][17]
In 2014, she received both a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship and a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Data-Driven Discovery Investigator award.[18][19] Her National Science Foundation CAREER Award supports her research group's work building computational and experimental software for imaging 4D partially spatially coherent light.[20] In 2017, she was awarded an investigator award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to develop microscopes capable of imaging deep structures within the brain.[21]
Waller was recognised as one of the MIT EECS Rising Stars in 2018.[22]
Awards and honours
- 2021 Adolph Lomb Medal, for important contributions to the advancement of computational microscopy and its applications[23]
- 2019 Fellow of The Optical Society[24]
- 2018 SPIE Early Career Achievement Award in Academia[15]
- 2016 Carol D. Soc Distinguished Graduate Student Mentoring Award for Junior Faculty[25]
- 2016 Best Paper Award, International Conference on Computational Photography[26]
- 2012 Ivan P. Kaminow Outstanding Early Career Professional Prize, The Optical Society[8][27]
