Yang receives 2025 IEEE Sensor Council Technical Achievement Award
Lan Yang recognized for transformative contributions to nanophotonic sensing
Lan Yang, the Edwin H. & Florence G. Skinner Professor of Electrical & Systems Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award in Sensors - Advanced Career.
The award recognizes Yang’s pioneering contributions to nanophotonic sensing technologies and their applications to diagnostics and medical imaging. The Technical Achievement Award in Sensors - Advanced Career, given annually by the IEEE Sensors Council, honors a person with outstanding technical contributions documented through influential publications, patents and demonstrated impact in the global community advancing sensing technologies. The IEEE Sensors Council is one of IEEE’s most interdisciplinary groups, representing more than 260,000 engineers and scientists across 26 member societies. Its mission is to advance innovation in sensor research, development and applications spanning healthcare, environmental monitoring, communications and beyond.
An internationally renowned leader in nanophotonics, Yang has made fundamental advances in understanding and controlling light–matter interactions at the nanoscale and applying them to sensing, spectroscopy and imaging. She pioneered optical microresonators as ultra-sensitive sensors, applying them to a broad range of detection and diagnostic needs, including the real-time, label-free detection and measurement of nanoparticles, viruses and biomolecules. Building on this foundation, she introduced self-referencing and gain-assisted techniques that enhanced stability and sensitivity, and later demonstrated exceptional-point–enhanced detection as part of her pioneering work in non-Hermitian photonics. These are among a series of innovations her group has made in advancing resonator-based sensing. Collectively, these innovations have established optical microresonators as versatile, high-performance platforms with applications spanning medical diagnosis, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, environmental monitoring and beyond.
This recognition builds on Yang’s record of sustained scientific achievement, which includes the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2011, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their independent research careers, for her pioneering contributions to microlasers and ultra-sensitive optical sensing, and being named a Highly Cited Researcher by the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate consistently for six consecutive years, since 2019. She is also a co-founder of DeepSight Technology, whose platform recently received FDA clearance for its first medical system that aims to transform image-guided procedures. The IEEE Sensors Council Award highlights the growing global recognition of Yang’s role in shaping the future of sensing, diagnostics and interdisciplinary engineering, with innovations to transform both science and health care.
Yang joined the faculty at WashU in 2007. She leads the Laboratory of Micro/Nano Photonics Research Group in the McKelvey School of Engineering. Over her career, she has earned numerous honors, including election as a fellow of the IEEE, Optica, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
