The Gordon Research Conference on Lasers in Medicine and Biology (GRC-LMB) will be held on July 25-30, 2010 at the Holderness School, Holderness, New Hampshire. The objective of this conference is to bring together researchers from academia, hospitals and clinics, national laboratories, and industries to jointly examine how new photonic technologies can bring progresses to medical practices, biological understandings, and pharmaceutical development. Biophotonics is the science and engineering of light with applications in medicine and biology. The advance in biophotonics is therefore always a multidisciplinary endeavor requiring inputs from physicists, chemists, engineers, biologists and clinicians. Physicists explore biomedical applications of fundamental optical principles. Chemists create optical sensors and probes. Engineers translate basic advances into practical devices. New optical techniques allow biologists to better investigate and model different physiological systems. Ultimately, better devices and biological insights enable clinicians to develop new therapies and cures for patients.

This multidisciplinary approach is now bearing fruits in many fronts: microscopy and nanophotonics have enhanced our understanding of the normal physiology from cellular to organ level and our understanding of pathological physiology in disease such as angiogenesis in tumors; diffusive optical tomography allows better understanding of our cognition as well as provides insight into origin of diseases such as migraine headache; photoacoustic tomography improves the spatial resolution of diffuse optical tomography by combining light with ultrasound; optical spectroscopic assays based on light absorption, scattering, and endogenous luminescence signals has allowed continuous monitoring of tissue oxygenation and potentially allow non-invasive diagnosis of diseases such as cancer and atherosclerosis. Most importantly, a number of photonic techniques have successfully translated into the clinics and becoming standard methods of care for some patients including the treatment of some malignant lesions by photodynamic therapy and the diagnosis of glaucoma and macular degeneration by optical coherence tomography.

Nine technical sessions are scheduled to provide a broad and comprehensive coverage of the biophotonics field while giving in depth examination of several rapidly developing subfields. The titles of the sessions include Nerve stimulation and neural imaging, Microscopy, Therapy and manipulation, Photoacoustic microscopy and computed tomography, Diffuse optical imaging and spectroscopy, Optical coherence tomography, Contrast agents, Phase conjugation and super-resolution microscopy, and Microscopic endoscopy and cytometry in vivo.

The GRC-LMB has been held biannually since 1960s and is one of the longest running meetings of our field. This meeting has served the biophotonics field in two important ways ever since. First, this meeting is routinely attended by most of the leading researchers of this field. The presentations of these experts always emphasize ongoing and unpublished works. Therefore, this conference serves as a vehicle where the biophotonics community can come together to identify the most promising future directions and jointly tackle the most difficult obstacles. Second, unlike many meetings that are attended by predominately senior researchers, many of the attendees of the conference are junior researchers, consisting of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The Gordon Conference brings together senior and junior researchers in a convivial environment that encourages in depth scientific exchanges. The conference is further organized such that oral presentations from senior researchers are followed with an ample and lively question-and-discussion period with the meeting participants. Finally, all junior meeting attendees participate in poster presentation where they can discuss their ongoing work with leaders of the field as well as their peers.