Gabriel Popescu is an Associate Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received the B.S. and M.S. in Physics from University of Bucharest, in 1995 and 1996, respectively, obtained his M.S. in Optics in 1999 and the Ph.D. in Optics in 2002 from the School of Optics/ CREOL (now the College of Optics and Photonics), University of Central Florida. Dr. Popescu continued his training with the G. R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory at M.I.T., working as a postdoctoral associate. He joined Illinois in August 2007 where he directs the Quantitative Light Imaging Laboratory (QLI Lab) at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Prof. Popescu received the 2009 NSF CAREER Award, was the 2012 Innovation Discovery Finalist selected by the Office of Technology Management Office, UIUC, was elected as the 2012-2013 Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies at UIUC, and a 2014 finalist in the New Venture Competition with Phi Optics, Inc., at UIUC Dr. Popescu is an Associate Editor of Optics Express and Biomedical Optics Express, and Editorial Board Member for Journal of Biomedical Optics. He is OSA Senior Member and SPIE Fellow. Over the past decade, Dr. Popescu has been working mainly on quantitative phase imaging of cells and tissues. He authored a book on this subject, edited another book on NanoBiophotonics, authored 100 journal publications, 120 conference presentations, 24 patents, gave 110 invited talks. Dr. Popescu founded Phi Optics, Inc., a start-up company that commercializes quantitative phase imaging technology.