Prof. dr hab. Maciej Wojtkowski

University Degree:

Professor of Physics (2003), habilitation in Physics (2010) at the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland

Position at ICTER:

ICTER's Chair and POB Group Leader

Research Areas:

Biomedical Imaging

Prof. dr hab. Maciej Wojtkowski (born 1975) is a physicist specializing in applied optics and medical and experimental physics. He started his scientific career at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. There he defended his master’s thesis, and then his doctoral thesis and postdoctoral thesis (habilitation). All degrees were awarded by the Institute of Physics, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Computer Science. From 1998 to 1999 he was employed as a researcher at the University of Vienna, Austria, and from 2003 to 2005 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and Tufts New England Eye Center, Boston, USA.

Prof. Wojtkowski is the inventor of the first prototype clinical SdOCT device for eye imaging, built at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and tested at the New England Eye Center in Boston USA, and the second built at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and tested at the Jurasz Ophthalmology Clinic in Bydgoszcz.[1][2][3] This device is used for non-invasive, non-contact eye examinations in clinics all over the world to monitor the onset, progression, and therapy of eye diseases.

Since 2016, Prof. Wojtkowski has headed the Department of Physical Chemistry of Biological Systems, and since 2019 the International Centre for Translational Eye Research – both institutions are subunits of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

He has authored more than 240 scientific publications, as well as several patents and patent applications. His work has been published in the following leading journals, among others: “Ophthalmology”, “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences”, “Nature Medicine”, “Optics Express”, “Journal of Biomedical Optics” and “Optics Letters”. He was the first to design a spectral optical coherence tomograph used for non-invasive, non-contact eye examinations. This invention has found a wide application and is used in clinics all over the world. In 2012 he was honored with the prestigious Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) Award in Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Engineering.