Lihong Wang

Lihong Wang is the Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and holder of the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Medical Engineering Leadership Chair at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), within the Division of Engineering and Applied Science. He also serves as Executive Officer for Medical Engineering. Wang received his B.S. in 1984 and M.S. in 1987 from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and his Ph.D. in 1992 from Rice University. He first joined Caltech as a Visiting Associate in 2016 before becoming Bren Professor in 2017 and assuming his current leadership roles in 2022.

Wang's research specializes in biomedical imaging, particularly photoacoustic and thermoacoustic tomography, light-speed compressed ultrafast photography, time-reversal optics, wavefront shaping, and quantum imaging and physics. His laboratory has pioneered numerous innovations, including functional photoacoustic tomography, 3D photoacoustic microscopy, optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy, the photoacoustic Doppler effect, photoacoustic reporter gene imaging, microwave-induced thermoacoustic tomography, universal photoacoustic reconstruction algorithms, time-reversed ultrasonically encoded optical focusing, and compressed ultrafast photography, the world's fastest camera capable of 10 trillion frames per second. His Monte Carlo model of photon transport in scattering media (MCML) is a standard tool used worldwide. These technologies enable multiscale, high-resolution structural, functional, metabolic, and molecular imaging in vivo, with applications in early cancer detection, surgical guidance, and brain imaging. Key publications include the textbook "Biomedical Optics: Principles and Imaging" (2007), "Photoacoustic Tomography: In Vivo Imaging from Organelles to Organs" (2012), "MCML—Monte Carlo Modeling of Light Transport in Multi-layered Tissues" (1995), and "Photoacoustic Imaging in Biomedicine" (2006). Wang has been honored with election to the National Academy of Medicine (2025), named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (2020), and featured in a special issue of the Journal of Biomedical Optics (2024).

Professional Email: lvw@caltech.edu