PicoQuant GmbH, a Berlin, Germany, maker of picosecond diode lasers and time-resolved fluorescence systems, awarded a Young Investigator prize of US$750 to two PhD students during the "Ultrasensitive and Single-Molecule Detection Technologies" session at the SPIE International Symposium on Biomedical Optics (BiOS), held during Photonics West 2007 last week in San Jose, Calif. The prize was shared by Heidi Dietrich, a PhD candidate in the Imaging Science & Technology/Quantitative Imaging research group at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, who presented "A new optical method for characterizing single molecule interactions," and Mikhail Rudenko, a PhD student in electrical engineering in the Applied Optics Group at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who presented "Integration and characterization of SiN nanopores for single-molecule detection in liquid-core ARROW waveguides" at the conference. PicoQuant said it will again sponsor a Young Investigator award at BiOS 2008. Young researchers are invited to submit abstracts; for more information, visit www.picoquant.com; email: [email protected]