Coblentz Society CLARA Craver Award

The Coblentz Society has created an award to recognize young individuals who have made significant contributions in applied analytical vibrational spectroscopy.

The Craver Award is presented annually to an outstanding young molecular spectroscopist whose efforts are in the area of applied analytical vibrational spectroscopy. The candidate must be under the age of 45 on January 1st of the year of the award. The work may include any aspect of infrared (NIR, MIR, or Far), and/or THz, and/or Raman spectroscopy in applied analytical vibrational spectroscopy. The nominees may come from an academic, government lab, or industrial backgrounds. Click here for information on the Coblentz Society Craver Award.

2024 Recipient

Conor L. Evans

Dr. Conor L. Evans is an Associate Professor at the Harvard Medical School, an Affiliated Faculty member of the Harvard University Biophysics Program and leads his lab at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Evans received his BS in Chemical Physics in 2002 from Brown University. He carried out his PhD at Harvard University with X. Sunney Xie the development and application of coherent Raman imaging technologies. He was mentored by Drs. de Boer and Hasan for his postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellman Center.

Dr. Evans joined the faculty at the Wellman Center in 2009 and has focused on the development and clinical translation of optical microscopy and spectroscopy tools, with interests in label-free imaging and quantification of drugs, tissues, and tissue physiology. Dr. Evans has led the use of coherent Raman imaging, in particular the quantitative imaging of both the skin and skin pharmacology. His team has developed new methods and analyses for the quantification of topically applied drugs to extract microscale pharmacokinetic parameters in vivo. Working with the FDA, the Evans lab recently demonstrated stimulated Raman scattering for determining topical product bioequivalence, a key need in the development of generic drugs. Dr. Evans is a recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, resulting in new oxygen imaging and sensing technologies currently in multiple clinical trials.

Dr. Evans is an editor for Scientific Reports, PLoS One, and Biophotonics Discovery and has written over 100 peer-reviewed publications. He holds 14 patents and patent applications. He is a Royce Fellow and has been honored with awards including the Goldwater Scholarship, NASA Space Grants, the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, the ASP New Investigator Award, and is a Fellow of the SPIE. He serves as the Wellman Center Faculty Liaison to the Department of Defense and is a faculty member of the Ludwig Center at Harvard.

Nominations

Please refer to the Coblentz website for further details.

Past Recipients

2023       Ishan Barman 

2022       Wei Min

2021       Zachary D. Schultz

2020       Claudia Conti

2019       Shawn (Xiaoyun) Chen

2018       Christy Haynes

2017        Martin Zanni

2016        Karen Faulds

2015        Ji-Xin Cheng 

2014       Lynne S. Taylor

2013       Rohit Bhargava 

2012       Duncan Graham 

2011       Michael W. George

2010      Boris Mizaikoff

2009      Takeshi Hasegawa

2008       John C. Conboy

2007      Katherine Bakeev