ProfessorPaulFrench

Summary

Paul French was a Physics undergraduate at Imperial in 1980 and has continued as a PhD student, post-doctoral researcher and member of the academic staff.  He has also worked as a Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico and as a Consultant at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ.  His research interests have evolved from ultrafast dye and solid-state laser physics to interdisciplinary biomedical optics-based research including coherence-gated imaging through turbid media and fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) for applications in molecular cell biology, drug discovery and clinical diagnosis. His current research includes the development of multidimensional fluorescence imaging for microscopy, endoscopy and tomography. Paul served as Head of the Photonics Group in the Physics Department from 2001-2013 and is now Vice Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London.  He may be contacted via the Optics Office , telephone: 44 20 7594 7713

For more information about our research, please go to the Photonics Group website 

Significant Activities

1999-2003  Advisory Editor of Optics Letters (Optical Society of America)

2000-2004 Associate Editor of Optics Express (Optical Society of America)

2002-2008 Editorial Board of J Phys D (Institute of Physics)

From 2007 Editorial Board of the Journal of Biophotonics

2005-2007 Chair of of the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the European Physical Society

In Europe I have served on various programme and organising committees of international conferences including as Co-Chair of CLEO/Europe-EQEC (Munich 2005) – the largest lasers/photonics conference in Europe.  I also served as Co-Chair of the first OSA European Conference on Biomedical Optics (Munich 1999), an ICTP Winter School in Biophotonics (Trieste 2000) and the Biophotonics Topic at the 1st Annual Meeting of the European Optical Society (Paris 2006).  I was a Co-Director of the Enrico Fermi School on Microscopy for Biophotonics (Varenna, 2011). During the preparatory phase of the ESFRI EuroBioImaging project I served as the Technology Co-ordinator for “Functional imaging” and was one of the founders of BioImagingUK.  

In the USA I have served on the organising committees of most of the major conferences in laser physics and biophotonics, including as co-Chair of the Engineering Conferences International meeting on Advances in Optics for Biotechnology, Medicine and Surgery (Florida 2007) and Program Co-Chair of OSA Optical Molecular Probes, Imaging and Drug Delivery (OMP) conference, Hawaii 2013.  From 2000-2004 I served on the OSA Technical Council and I was a member of the OSA BioOptics Advisory Committee. 

Selected Publications

Journal Articles