OSA Names Award Winners

Daniel Kleppner, a physics professor emeritus at MIT and co-director of the MIT-Harvard University Center for Ultracold Atoms, is the recipient of OSA's 2007 Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Endowment, the highest award conferred by the society for overall distinction in optics, for "sustained innovation, discovery and leadership in the interaction of radiation with atoms and for his service and general educational activities," OSA annnounced last week.

Other OSA 2007 award receipients include: M.J. Soileau, Esther Hoffman Beller Medal; Luigi Lugiato, Max Born Award; Stephen D. Fantone, Distinguished Service Award; J. Roger P. Angel, Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize; Connie J. Chang-Hasnain, Nick Holonyak Jr. Award; Charles R. Munnerlyn, Edwin H. Land Medal (co-sponsored with the Society for Imaging Science and Technology); Jonathan Tennyson, Ellis R. Lippincott Award (co-sponsored with the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy); and Shanhui Fan, Adolph Lomb Medal.

Also: J. Gary Eden, C. E. K. Mees Medal; Pierre Agostini, William F. Meggers Award; Arpad A. Bergh, OSA Leadership Award-New Focus/Bookham Prize; Kenneth Chau, OSA-New Focus/Bookham Student Award; James L. Fergason, David Richardson Medal; Serge Haroche, Charles Hard Townes Award; Emmanuel Desurvire, John Tyndall Award; Bahram Jalali, R.W. Wood Prize.

"Year after year, OSA honors the best and the brightest in the field of optics and photonics and this year is no different," said Elizabeth Rogan, OSA executive director. "These 17 outstanding scientists and engineers have contributed to the field in their own unique ways, providing leadership, innovations, expertise, service and quality research."

Soileau, vice president for research and commercialization at the University of Central Florida was recognized for outstanding contributions to optical science and engineering education and distinguished and longstanding service to the optics education and research community, specifically for establishing the university's Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL) as a major optics center.
Lugiato, a professor at the University of Insubria, Italy, is being honored for pioneering theoretical contributions to the fields of optical bistability and instabilities, optical pattern formation, cavity solitons, squeezing and quantum imaging.

Fantone, founder and president of Optikos Corp., and OSA's treasurer since 1996, was awarded for service to the optical community and to OSA.

Angel was recognized 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 both the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab and the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics and a professor of astronomy and of optical sciences at the University of Arizona.

Chang-Hasnain was honored for her career of contributions to control of diode lasers: vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser arrays, injection locking and slow light. A professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, she is also chairman of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Graduate Group and director of the Center for Optoelectronic Nanostructured Semiconductor Technologies.

Munnerlyn, the now-retired founder of VISX Inc., was recognized for 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," OSA said.

Tennyson, a professor of physics and head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London, was selected for his contributions to theory and simulations of rotational-vibrational spectra of small molecules and applications for practical purposes. The Lippincott Award, co-sponsored by OSA, the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy, recognizes outstanding contributions to vibrational spectroscopy. The selection committee consists of members from all three societies.

Fan was recognized for his noteworthy contributions to optics before reaching the age of 35, for his fundamental work in nanophotonic structures. Fan is an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.

For more biographies, visit: www.osa.org