Muyinatu A. Lediju Bell of Johns Hopkins University (JHU) will become the new editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biomedical Optics (JBO), effective January 1, 2025 . JBO, the first scholarly journal in the field of biophotonics, publishes work on novel optical systems and techniques for improved healthcare and biomedical research. The journal, which launched in 1996, is published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.
Bell is the John C. Malone associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at JHU’s Whiting School of Engineering, where she is also the founder and director of the Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Systems Engineering (PULSE) Lab. She succeeds the journal's current editor-in-chief, Brian W. Pogue, who has held the role since 2018.
Bell also holds appointments in the university’s departments of Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science, and in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s department of Oncology at the Kimmel Cancer Center. In addition, she is affiliated with Hopkins’ Carnegie Center for Surgical Innovation, Laboratory for Computational Sensing Robots, and Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare. Her research areas have pioneered advances in ultrasound imaging, photoacoustic imaging, image quality improvements, beamforming methods, deep learning applications, light delivery system designs, medical robotics, image-guided surgery, technology development, medical device design, and clinical translation.
Inducted as an SPIE Fellow in 2023, Bell received an SPIE Early Career Achievement Award in 2021. She has been active with the SPIE optics community since 2014, where she has published her research in JBO, Biophotonics Discovery, and the Journal of Medical Imaging; served as a peer reviewer for JBO; served on the SPIE Publications Committee; and gave the inaugural JBO-sponsored Hot Topics talk at SPIE Photonics West BiOS Symposium. She has served on the Photonics West program committees for the conferences on Advanced Biomedical and Clinical Diagnostic and Surgical Guidance Systems and Multiscale Imaging and Spectroscopy since 2019 and 2022, respectively.
Bell’s many recognitions include an MIT Technology Review Top 35 Innovators under 35 honor, a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow award, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Trailblazer Award, and an Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. This year, she was a recipient of the NSF’s Alan T. Waterman Award, the nation’s highest honor for early-career scientists and engineers.
Bell sits on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Imaging Program Scientific Advisory Board and the Editorial Advisory Board of GEN Biotechnology, and is a grant panel reviewer for the NIH and the NSF. A former associate editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, she has also served as an associate editor of Medical Physics, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, Photoacoustics, and Ultrasonic Imaging. She has authored more than 180 journal publications and conference proceedings.
Bell received her bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 2006 from MIT and her PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University in 2012. She became a postdoctoral fellow of computer science at Johns Hopkins University that year, joining the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2016.
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