IPG Founder Wins LIA’s Top Honor

Valentin Gapontsev, founder, chairman and CEO of high-power fiber laser maker IPG Photonics Corp. of Oxford, Mass., has received the 2009 Arthur L. Schawlow Award, the highest honor given by the Laser Institute of America (LIA). The prize was presented Nov. 4 at LIA’s International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics (ICALEO) conference in Orlando, Fla. Named for the 1981 recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics, the award honors individuals who have made distinguished contributions to the application of lasers in science, industry, education and medicine. At the ceremony, Gapontsev was recognized as “the father of the fiber laser industry as it is known today, who has pioneered the field in five decades of academic work and as the founder and CEO of a global technology company that continues to transform the laser industry.”