Past Awards

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Allen Prize
Archie Mahan Prize
Dekker Foundation Student Scholarship Award
New Focus/Bookham Student Award

Allen Prize

Established in 1990 and concluded in 2004, this prize was presented to a person who, while a graduate student, made outstanding contributions to atmospheric remote sensing using electro-optical instrumentation especially for conceiving new and unique devices, for the development of new measuring techniques, or for perceptive analysis of remote sensing measurements. The work which the award recognized should have been completed no more than three years prior to the date of the original nomination deadline. It was endowed by Robert Allen and consisted of a certificate and $1,500.

Winners

Year	Name
2004	Jens Biegert
2003	Weilin Pan
2002	Iain Fletcher Howieson
2001	David N. Whiteman
2000	Remy Avila
1999	Blake Crowther
1998	Huailin Chen
1997	Richard Collins
1996	William E. Eichinger
1995	Carter Grotbeck
1994	Jirong Yu
1993	Timothy J. Kane
1992	Chris A. Hostetler
1991	Zhiping Chu
1990	Richard E. Bills

Archie Mahan Prize

Established in 1992 at the bequest of former Treasurer Archie Mahan, this biennial prize recognized the best feature article in Optics & Photonics News (OPN). Selection was based on accessibility beyond the area of specialty, clarity of text, uses of figures and illustrations, topical interest, current relevance, and writing style. The prize consisted of a certificate and $1,500. OPN articles were automatically reviewed and nominations not solicited. The prize was concluded in 2004.

Winners

Year		Name
2004		Heidi Hofer, David R. Williams For revealing the wide array of remarkable ways that eyes auto calibrate, through clearly explained, illustrated examples that include tests that readers can perform with their own eyes in their article “The Eye's Mechanisms for Autocalibration"
2002		Edward Walter Hagley, Lu Deng, William D. Phillips, Keith Burnett, and Charles W. Clark For "The Atom Laser", a focused and well-organized article that succinctly connects recent observations in the field of phase coherent matter waves with early 20th century research on Bose-Einstein condensation
2000		Paula R. L. Heron and Lillian C. McDermott For the relevance of her article to the important dialogue concerning science education, and the accessibility to a general readership through use of clear, well-illustrated examples
1998		Roger Easton, Jr, Robert H. Johnston and Keith T. Knox For the August 1997 OPN feature article "Imaging the Dead Sea Scrolls"
1996		Robert E. Spero and Stan Whitcomb For their Optics & Photonics News article, "The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)," which was published in July 1995
1994		Robert Q. Fugate For his article "Laser Beacon Adaptive Optics," which appeared in the June 1993 issue of Optics & Photonics News

Dekker Foundation Student Scholarship Award

Presented in 2003 and 2005, this student scholarship was co-sponsored with the Dekker Foundation. The $10,000 scholarship was open to graduate students in the field of photonics and optical engineering. Winners received a $10,000 cash prize, up to $1,000 in travel support and a certificate presented at Frontiers in Optics.

Winners

Year	Name
2005	Joyce Poon
2003	Sameer R. Bhalotra

New Focus/Bookham Student Award

Established in 1997 and concluded in 2008, this student award program served to encourage research excellence, presentation prowess, and leadership in the optics community among Student Members. The multi-part competition concluded with a special oral presentation session during CLEO/QELS.

Winners & Finalists

Year		Name
2008		Top Prize: Richard Sandberg, JILA and Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, USA Finalists: Amit Agrawal, Univ. of Utah, USA Wenshan Cai, Purdue Univ. USA François Couny, Univ. of Bath, UK Umit Demirbas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Amy Lytle, JILA and Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, USA Franklyn Quinlan, Univ. of Central Florida, USA
2007		Top Prize: Kenneth Chau, Univ. of Alberta, Canada Finalists: Keisuke Lucas Goda, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Michael Chung-Yi Huang, Univ. of California, Berkeley, USA Hong Chuyen Nguyen, Univ. of Sydney, Australia Yoshi Okawachi, Cornell Univ., USA Giovanni Volpe, Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, Spain Ying Zhou, CREOL, Univ. of Central Florida, USA
2006		Top Prize: Virginia O. Lorenz, JILA, Univ. of Colorado and NIST, USA Finalists: Andrew M. C. Dawes, Duke Univ., USA Jonathan A. N. Fisher, Univ. of Pennsylvania, USA Di Liang, Univ. of Notre Dame, USA Yi-Hsin Lin, Univ. of Central Florida, USA Iva Maxwell, Harvard Univ., USA Babak Momeni, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
2005		Top Prize: Gretchen Campbell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Finalists: Ivan Amat-Roldán, ICFO – Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, Barcelona, Spain Aaron Danner, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA Preetpaul Devgan, Northwestern Univ., USA Zhi Jiang, Purdue Univ., USA Sajjad A. Khan, CREOL, Univ. of Central Florida, USA Thomas P. White, CUDOS, Univ. of Sydney, Australia
2004		Top Prize: Jason McKeever, California Institute of Technology, USA Finalists: Lukas Chrostowski, Univ. of California Berkeley, USA James Edward Carey, Harvard Univ., USA Paulo C. Dainese, Jr., State Univ. at Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil Christiano J. S. de Matos, Imperial College London, UK Aparna Bhatnagar, Stanford Univ., UK Kevin W. Holman, Univ. of Colorado, USA
2003		Top Prize: Michael Mielke, Univ. of Central Florida, USA Finalists: Felix Brunner, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich, Switzerland Bradley Ferguson, Univ. of Adelaide, Australia, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA Joel McCajah Hales, Univ. of Central Florida, USA Ju Han Lee, Univ. of Southampton, UK Kenneth Kin-Yip Wong, Stanford Univ., USA
2002		Seth Aubin, State Univ. of New York, Stony Brook, USA E. Staffan Bjorlin, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, USA Michael J. Escuti, Brown Univ., USA Gordon A. Keeler, Stanford Univ., USA Jason D. McKinney, Purdue Univ., USA Victor Perlin, Univ. of Michigan, USA Sergey V. Polyakov, Univ. of Central Florida/CREOL, USA Paul L. Voss, Northwestern Univ., USA