Heavily involved in SPIE conferences as a chair, committee member, and presenter since the early 90s, Grundfest was active in the earliest iterations of SPIE BiOS and, along with SPIE Fellow Abraham Katzir, was that symposium’s founding chair. Grundfest was appointed an SPIE Fellow in 1996. “The death of Warren Grundfest is a great loss to the biomedical optics community,” said Katzir, a professor of physics at Tel Aviv University. “Warren assisted me in establishing the SPIE conferences on optics in biology and medicine more than 30 years ago. Using his wide network of researcher and physicians, he paved the road to vibrant conferences. The current success of the SPIE BiOS meetings is largely due to his vision.”

Jean-Jacques Lemaire (MD, PhD) is full professor of neurosurgery at the Université Clermont Auvergne (EPE UCA). His research focuses on image guided neurosurgery and connectomics from methodological approaches to clinical research; in this context he stayed in USA laboratories at Harvard Medical School and UCLA.

An expert in advanced neuroimaging techniques, Neal Prakash, M.D., Ph.D., is City of Hope’s chief of the Division of Neurology and director of neuro-optical imaging. Dr. Prakash leads programs for and treats patients with chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, headaches and chemobrain. He is heading a program to analyze and treat the long-term neurological effects of cancer patients who also recovered from COVID-19.

My name is Michael Okun, MD, and I am a board-certified neurologist, movement disorders specialist, neuroscientist and author who practices with the philosophy that ‘the patient is the sun’ and should be at the center of all care decisions. I co-founded and co-direct the internationally-renowned Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases with my neurosurgeon partner and friend, Kelly Foote, MD. Since 2006, I have served as both the Medical Director and most recently as the Medical Advisor for the Parkinson’s Foundation.