Bell is the first Brooklyn Tech winner in the award's 48-year history.

Established by Congress in 1975 to honor NSF’s first director, Alan T. Waterman, the award includes a five-year $1 million grant that supports recipients’ scientific research or advanced study in various fields, ranging from mathematical and physical sciences to engineering and social sciences.

"Brooklyn Technical High School is where I learned that there was an entire field called engineering,” Bell notes. “I was a Chemistry major, introduced to multiple engineering subdisciplines through a program for women sophomores who excelled in math and science. Through that program, I immediately identified biomedical engineering as the perfect merger of all of my technical and academic interests to date.

“I also had the amazing opportunity to learn how to balance multiple competing interests by excelling as a student-athlete and captain of the BTHS track team,” Bell continued. “All of these experiences were excellent preparation for me to become a successful scientist and engineer today."

Bell’s achievements cross several medical domains, including neurosurgery, cardiovascular health, women’s health, and cancer diagnosis and treatment. She pioneered the development of the world’s first short-lag spatial coherence beamformer for ultrasound data, revolutionizing imaging clarity and reducing acoustic clutter. This innovation addresses persistent challenges in photoacoustic imaging, particularly skin tone bias, benefiting diverse communities. Additionally, her advancements in photoacoustic-guided surgery enhance visualization, improving patient safety during complex procedures. Bell’s recent research utilizes AI to detect COVID-19 in lung ultrasound images, furthering medical diagnostics.

Bell, who holds additional appointments in the Johns Hopkins departments of Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science, has won numerous awards throughout her career, including the National Institutes of Health K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, recognition in MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 list, the National Institutes of Health Trailblazer Award, the NSF CAREER Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship in Physics, and recognition as Maryland’s Outstanding Young Engineer. Her recent accolades include being elected as a Fellow of AIMBE, SPIE, and Optica.

Bell will be celebrated for her accomplishments at the NSF awards gala in Washington, D.C., and at a meeting with the National Science Board in Alexandria, Virginia in May 2024.