OSA names recipients of awards, medals

The Optical Society of America has honored 17 scientists and engineers for their leadership, innovations, expertise, service, and research in the fields of optics and photonics. The awards and medals will be presented during an OSA meeting this September in San Jose, California, except for two that have already been distributed.

Receiving the Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Endowment, the society’s highest award, will be Daniel Kleppner, the Lester Wolfe Professor of Physics Emeritus at MIT and codirector of the MIT–Harvard University Center for Ultracold Atoms. Kleppner was selected “for sustained innovation, discovery and leadership in the interaction of radiation with atoms and for his service and general educational activities.”

M. J. Soileau will be awarded the Esther Hoffman Beller Medal for his “distinguished and long-standing service to the optics education and research community—and specifically for establishing CREOL (the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers) as a major optics center,” the award selection committee wrote. Soileau is the vice president for research and professor of optics, electrical and computer engineering, and physics at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

The Max Born Award will be handed to Luigi Lugiato, a professor at the University of Insubria in Italy. He will be honored “for pioneering theoretical contributions to the fields of optical bistability and instabilities, optical pattern formation, cavity solitons, squeezing and quantum imaging.”

Stephen D. Fantone will be the recipient of this year’s Distinguished Service Award for his “outstanding vision, leadership and service in setting the financial policies and procedures for the Society that provide financial stability and opportunity for the foreseeable future.” He is the founder and president of Optikos Corp in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and has served as OSA’s treasurer since 1996.

The Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize will be given to J. Roger P. Angel “for innovation in optical systems development, including large astronomical telescope and mirror technology, methods for observing extrasolar planets, fiber-fed spectroscopy, adaptive optics, and a possible optical solution for global warming.” Angel is director of the Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory and the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics, both at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and is also Regents Professor and professor of astronomy and optical sciences at the university.

Connie J. Chang-Hasnain will receive the Nick Holonyak Jr Award in recognition of her “contributions to control of diode lasers: vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser arrays, injection locking, and slow light.” Chang-Hasnain is the John R. Whinnery Chair Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also serves as the chair of the nanoscale science and engineering graduate group and director of the Center for Optoelectronic Nanostructured Semiconductor Technologies.

The Edwin H. Land Medal, cosponsored with the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, will be handed to Charles R. Munnerlyn “for his pioneering science, engineering, and entrepreneurship in developing and promoting excimer laser surgery for the correction of vision, which has created a new industry and has given millions of people normal vision without glasses.” Munnerlyn, now retired, is the founder of VISX Inc in Santa Clara, California.

Jonathan Tennyson will take home the Ellis R. Lippincott Award, cosponsored with the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy. Tennyson, Massey Professor of Physics and head of the physics and astronomy department at University College London, was chosen “for his contributions to theory and simulations of rotational-vibrational spectra of small molecules and applications for practical purposes.”

The Adolph Lomb Medal will be presented to Shanhui Fan “for his fundamental work in nanophotonic structures.” Fan is an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.

J. Gary Eden will be given the C. E. K. Mees Medal “for seminal interdisciplinary contributions to ultraviolet lasers, photochemical vapor deposition, ultrafast spectroscopy and microplasma devices, and for strengthening international collaborations in these areas of optics and photonics.” Eden is professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Laboratory for Optical Physics and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The William F. Meggers Award will go to Pierre Agostini, a physics professor at Ohio State University. He is being honored “for leadership in the development of innovative experiments providing major insights into the dynamics of the nonlinear response of atoms and molecules submitted to strong infrared laser pulses.”

Arpad A. Bergh will receive the OSA Leadership Award–New Focus/Bookham Prize “for his leadership role in establishing and leading the Optoelectronic Industries Development Association (OIDA) and making it the primary advocate for the optoelectronics industry in the US over the past 12 years.” Bergh, now retired, was cofounder of OIDA and served as its president from 1994 to 2006.

Kenneth Chau, a PhD candidate in engineering physics at the University of Alberta, received the OSA–New Focus/Bookham Student Award in May at the CLEO/QELS meeting in Baltimore for his talk, “Magnetically Anisotropic Photon Transport.” Chau wrote his paper under the guidance of Abdulhakem Y. Elezzabi, Canada research chair of the electrical and computer engineering department at the university.

James L. Fergason will be presented with the David Richardson Medal “for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the physics and optics of liquid crystals, and particularly for his pioneering contributions to liquid crystal display technology.” He is the founder of Fergason Patent Properties LLC in Menlo Park, California.

The Charles Hard Townes Award will go to Serge Haroche, professor of quantum physics at the Collège de France in Paris, “for pioneering experiments in cavity quantum electrodynamics, starting with the observation of superradiance, leading to the two-photon maser, nondestructive measurements of photons, and decoherence of Schrödinger cats.”

Emmanuel Desurvire received the John Tyndall Award, cosponsored with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, in March during the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference 2007 in Anaheim, California. The senior director in the wavelength division multiplexing networks product group in Alcatel-Lucent’s optics division, Desurvire was honored “for pioneering contributions to the physical and theoretical understanding of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and to their early development.”

The R. W. Wood Prize will go to Bahram Jalali “for the invention and demonstration of Raman lasing in silicon.” Jalali is a professor of electrical engineering at UCLA.