Igor Meglinski

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Igor Meglinski is a British, New Zealand, and Finnish scientist who works at Aston University. He is a professor in Quantum Biophotonics and Biomedical Engineering and collaborates with several departments and institutes at the university.

Education and early career
Meglinski earned his BSc and MSc in Laser Physics from Saratov State University. He completed his PhD in 1997 in a joint program between Saratov State University and the University of Pennsylvania, under the guidance of Britton Chance, Arjun Yodh, and Valery Tuchin. He began his academic career with postdoctoral work at the University of Exeter and then joined Cranfield University in 2001, where he led the Biomedical Optical Diagnostics Laboratory and later headed Bio-Photonics and Biomedical Optical Diagnostics.

Key research contributions
- Helped develop the Monte Carlo method to model how laser light travels through highly scattering tissue.
- Co-developed Diffusing-Wave Spectroscopy (DWS) for non-invasive monitoring of blood flow.
- Advanced polarization optics in turbid (cloudy) media, including circular polarization and polarization memory.
- Demonstrated that orbital angular momentum (twisted light) can retain its topological structure after multiple scattering in tissue, helping create the field of structured light diagnostics.
- Worked on dynamic light scattering imaging of blood flow and on using optical techniques for skin and tissue diagnosis, including Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT).

Recent and current work
Meglinski has explored hemodynamics in the brain, improved methods to assess blood flow in diabetic patients, and used art to help communicate complex science to the public. He is involved in cutting-edge topics such as adaptive META-surfaces for 7D optical biopsy, quantum polarimetry for tissue diagnostics, and the use of orbital angular momentum to study exosomes and intracellular communication. He also helps develop online tools for the biophotonics community.

Impact and publications
He has authored more than 450 scientific papers and has an h-index of 56, reflecting his influence in the field of biomedical optics and photonics.