We congratulate our newly minted Dr. rer. nat. David L. Vasquez Pinzon on the successful defense of his doctoral thesis! Over the past seven years, he dedicated himself to the development of multimodal optical imaging techniques for medical diagnostics. He not only advanced his own projects with great success but also enriched our work with his extensive expertise and collegial spirit.

At the heart of his dissertation was the systematic combination of complementary optical imaging modalities. Using multimodal instrumentation, tissue could be captured simultaneously with different contrast mechanisms, both structurally and at the molecular-chemical level. A central outcome is a compact multimodal microscopy system. It enables co-registered data acquisition across all modalities and allows direct correlation with histopathological reference data. The combination of optical modalities also significantly improves diagnostic accuracy. This was demonstrated in a clinical study on colorectal carcinoma: the fusion of Raman spectroscopy and optical coherence tomography led to a substantial gain in classification performance. A further focus was the development of an endoscopic OCT system for visualizing cardiac microstructures. It enabled the differentiation of relevant tissue components and their analysis using data-driven methods. This approach opens new perspectives for the diagnosis of cardiac diseases.

Beyond his scientific achievements, we sincerely thank him for the excellent collaboration and his consistently reliable support. The fact that he also landed the wreath squarely on the sword of Hanfried after his defense goes to show, precision and a steady hand are qualities he brings well beyond the laboratory. We extend our heartfelt congratulations on his doctorate and wish him all the very best for his future career and personal life!