Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ"

Text reads "Congratulations to the 2025 Leading Edge Fellows" followed by the Leading Edge logo and www.leadingedgesymposium.org. Below are the headshots and names of the 40 new Leading Edge Fellows. They are Cel Welch Lianna Wat Maria Toro Moreno Sarah Talley Xulu Sun Ines Sturmlechner Virginia Savy Amelie Raz Kali Pruss Caterina Profaci Sarah Pierce Melissa Pamula Kehinde Odufowora Patricia Nano Ariana Musa de Aquino Nour El Houda Mimouni Kathleen Martin Brea Manuel Mable Lam Miri Krupkin Elaine Kouame Megan Kirchgessner Sumin Kim Shubhangini Kataruka Geraldine Jowett Andrea Jones Leanne Iannucci Emily Heckman Allison Girasole Florencia Fernandez Chiappe Tonie Farris Hannah Elam Erin Doherty Xiaoyun Ding Maria Bustillo Julia Brunner Debadrita Bhattacharya Lorena Benedetti Ashley Anderson Krisha Aghi

We are thrilled to announce the 2025 Leading Edge Fellows! 40 outstanding postdoctoral fellows doing pioneering research in a wide range of biological and biomedical disciplines.

Learn more about these exceptional scientists:

www.leadingedgesymposium.org/fellows

If you are attending the Optica Biophotonics conference in San Diego, be sure to check out Magdalena's talk on this work!

DeepPD obtains better de-aberrated images without requiring optical correction, and more completely estimates wavefronts by accounting for nonlinearities in our deformable mirror and other assumptions not captured in our original analytic approach.

In our new preprint, we combine a deep learning framework with our phase-diverse image acquisition called "DeepPD".

We demonstrated that by acquiring few extra images with added optical aberrations ("phase diversities") wavefront sensing can be achieved using an analytic optimization scheme.

Last year we published a simple experimental method for image-based wavefront sensing in fluorescence microscopy using phase diversity.

opg.optica.org/optica/fullt...

Excited to announce the release of a preprint I have been working in collaboration with Magdalena C. Schneider on to improve phase diversity-based wavefront sensing using deep learning.

arxiv.org/abs/2504.14157

Toxic positivity, be damned, Herman Hesse reminds us that true optimism is not the denial of suffering. It is the will to perceive beauty amidst the suffering, and to conceive compassion despite suffering: “because the world is so full of death and horror I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell“

From @yepicurus on instagram

Something that has become really clear to me is that we really need more movies, TV series, and documentaries which romanticize and glorify scientific struggle. We have so many medical and cop dramas, we need a "Law and Order" or "ER" for science so people finally understand and appreciate our work.

Too bad it will involve actual legwork to distinguish against the broader uses of these terms. My research project is literally called "Phase Diversity" - it originated in the 1980's in Astronomy - I study physics, not DEI. Wait until they find out how much cis/trans gets used in Chemistry!

This is utterly insane. I literally study a method called "Phase Diversity" that originates in Astronomy and deals with physics - not DEI. I am lucky that I will not be affected in the short term but this is absolutely horrifying censorship and it is only the start.

All of these structures and checks and balances are theoretical: they have never been stress tested in this manner before. Laws are meaningless if not enforced.

The question is: how much will -unelected- Elon Musk be allowed to dismantle the government in this clearly unconstitutional manner.

This has been the darkest week for science in recent memory. Horrifying to imagine what else is to come.

Last night, I went to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for the first time in almost 8 months and today, everything is going right ...Coincidence? 🤔😂

Me in 2008, a community college student watching House: “I don’t know what to do with my life, I would be a great doctor”.

Me in 2025, a postdoc watching The Pitt: I am so glad I did not become that type of Doctor I am not cut out for any of this nonsense .

I like to think there are others out there on their own improbable journeys. These are the students who perhaps stand to gain the most if successful, and we do them a great disservice when we give up on them before giving them a chance because they deviate from an increasingly-precise template

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The dilemma is not just who fails when we select candidates purely on numbers, but who are we excluding that would have succeeded? What do these metrics inadequately model about what makes someone a successful research scientist?

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Which is to say, academia is not alone in this problem of using indicators of past performance to predict future success - particularly when the past performance insufficiently captures the physical, mental, and emotional tolls to be endured in future training. 7/

How to select SEAL Candidates who will be successful in training has been a long-standing problem. It turns out that physical fitness scores are not sufficiently predictive: grit is also a critical component - but difficult to measure. 6/

It reminds me of a similar problem the military faces: How do you assess and select Navy SEALS?

BUD/S, the school for SEAL Candidates, has a physical fitness test that represents a high barrier to entry - and yet up to 90% of those that enter fail to become SEALS.

5/

What do you do when the answer isn't in the back of the book? When nobody knows the answer and you only have yourself to rely on?

Students used to achieving high scores and riding the coattails of impressive team projects may flounder in conditions of relentless failure and uncertainty. 4/

I felt intimidated and hopelessly out of my depth the first week among students who were more prepared or from better schools

And yet... All those smart students who knew all the answers week 1? Most of them didn't make it to the end. What I lacked in knowledge I made up for in mental toughness 3/

I came from a small, unranked public school with poor test scores, a poor math background, and one co-author manuscript in preparation. If you lined me up in class rank I was probably near the bottom. 2/

The recent discussion on X with @mbeisen.bsky.social about how grad students are selected made me reflect on my own journey. I often wonder about who it was that made the life-changing decision to approve my grad school app, and what it was about me that pushed them over the edge. 1/

#AcademicSky

I was at a Sonic concert last weekend and it was ground zero for weapons-grade-autism. Literally doesn’t get more autistic than Sonic lol

I can’t help but think this is a good thing: so many companies latched onto wokeness and DEI as performative virtue signaling: we will now see who is serious about change and improving things and who just wanted to look good while doing nothing.

The common theme through both of these articles is that becoming the type of person who continually seeks challenge to drive growth will make you a better scientist, labmate, and leader.

These traits are not innate - you develop them over time when you focus on becoming 1% better every day.

Further, you are shown the fact that teams can accomplish feats - like continuously carrying a 200# sand log for over a mile - that individuals cannot. Building a mindset that is team-oriented will take you farther than being a person who is focused solely on their own priorities.

This order applies even - and especially if you are personally suffering. You are taught to instead look for a teammate to help. If every teammate is looking out for each other instead of themselves, no one is left behind.