Caitlin Smith has been awarded the RHT Bates Postgraduate Scholarship by the Academy of the Royal Society Te Apārangi

The award is for PhD study in the physical sciences and engineering at a New Zealand university. Caitlin, a student at the University of Auckland, has won it to further her work on the “photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging of blood flow for the quantification of hemodynamics in bone.”

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Caitlin is a PhD student at Te Whai Ao — Dodd-Walls Centre and the student chapter leader this year. She completed her BSc in Physics and Chemistry in 2020 and an Honours degree in Physics in 2021.

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The Royal Society announced the award saying Caitlin’s research focuses on developing non-invasive techniques to quantify blood flow in cortical bone using photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging. It says that to improve imaging accuracy, Caitlin integrates methods from seismology to correct for acoustic refraction when imaging through bone layers.  She is currently using benchtop bone models to validate and refine the accuracy of her imaging and flow mapping techniques.

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Working with supervisor Jami Shepherd, Caitlin is the sixth Dodd-Walls student in a row to have won the RHT Bates Postgraduate Scholarship. Her achievement follows that of five other Dodd-Walls researchers working under Director, Frederique Vanholsbeeck

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It’s the second scholarship this year that Caitlin has won for her topic of study. In May she was awarded a 2024 Optics and Photonics Scholarship by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, for potential contributions to optics, photonics, or a related field.

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She told SPIE at the time, “My passion for research is motivated by its potential for real-world applications to improve patient outcomes.”

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Well done, Caitlin!

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