2013 Board of Directors Biographies
George Bayz
Synopsys, Inc.
Term: 1/1/12-12/31/13
George Bayz joined Synopsys with the company's acquisition of Optical Research Associates (ORA) in October 2010. Prior to Synopsys, Mr. Bayz was President and CEO of ORA, and also served on the ORA Board of Directors and ORA Audit Committee, which provided oversight of the reporting practices of the company and the quality and integrity of the company's financial reports. Mr. Bayz has over 18 years' senior management experience in high-technology firms, including: President and CEO of PeoplePoint Systems, Inc., an enterprise software company; General Manager and Executive Vice President at Artemis International Solutions Corp., a provider of advanced project management solutions; President and CEO of Thinque Systems, a workforce automation solutions provider; and President and CEO of MAI Systems Corporation, a provider of information technology to the hospitality industry. Mr. Bayz received a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California and a J.D. from Loyola Marymount University. He is a Member of the California Bar, and is a California Certified Public Accountant.
Michael D. Duncan
US Naval Research Laboratory
Term: 1/1/10-12/31/13
Dr. Michael Duncan has a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University and has been a research physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory for over 30 years. He has worked on lasers, nonlinear optics, hyperspectral sensors, and related technologies during that time. He recently was detailed to the Office of Naval Research to work as the EO/IR Program Officer, where he worked on optical sensor systems for Navy air, surface, and subsurface platforms. He is currently involved in a number of sensor payloads being developed for small UAS platforms.
Min Gu
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Term: 1/1/13-12/31/15
Professor Min Gu is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Australian Institute of Physics, the Optical Society of America, the International Society for Optical Engineering and the Institute of Physics (UK). He gained a PhD degree in optics from Chinese Academy of Sciences. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow first at the University of New South Wales, and later at the University of Sydney. He was awarded an Australian Research Fellowship of the Australian Research Council at the University of Sydney. He joined Victoria University of Technology in 1995, where he became Professor (Chair) of Optoelectronics and Director of Optical Technology Research Laboratory 1998. Professor Gu has conducted many pioneering projects in the area of bio/nanophotonics and his ground breaking research work has been featured more than 2000 times in media reports including Nature Photonics, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials, Nature Asia-Materials, Biophotonics International, Photonics Spectra, Laser Focus World, Economists, Australian Optical Society News, The Australian, The Age, The Herald Sun, Campus Review, Australasian Science and ABC TV and Radio. His inventions include five-dimensional high-density optical data storage, nanoplasmonic solar cells and nonlinear optical endoscopy. Consequently, six spin-off companies were established, 3DCD Technology Pty. Ltd. in 2001 (received the COMET Grant and Achievement Award from the AusIndustry in 2002), InFocus Enterprises Pty. Ltd. in 2003, InVision Medical Technologies Pty. Ltd. in 2003 (received the COMET Grant in 2005), Image Cytometrics Pty. Ltd. in 2008 (received the COMET grant in 2008), Biosurfaces Pty Ltd. in 2008 and RongXing SciTech Co in 2009. Four international leading companies, Samsung Electronics (Korea), Suntech Power Holdings (China), OptiScan Pty. Ltd. (Australia) and Genera Biosystems Pty. Ltd. (Australia), have established joint R&D projects with Professor Gu's Centre.
Naomi J. Halas
Rice University
Term: 1/1/11-12/31/13
Naomi J. Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, where she also holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry, and Bioengineering. Her PhD research was performed with Daniel Grischkowsky at IBM Yorktown in the area of ultrafast nonlinear optics and dark soliton generation, where she also worked on the first terahertz time-domain spectroscopy efforts, also reported by the IBM group. Dr. Halas joined Rice University following her postdoctoral fellowship at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where she studied time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy on semiconductor surfaces. Dr. Halas is co-founder of Nanospectra Biosciences, Inc., a company currently commercializing a photothermal cancer therapy based on her nanoparticles. She is founder and Director of the Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) at Rice, which supports collaborations and interactions among researchers at Rice and other institutions nationally and internationally in the field of Plasmon-based optics and applications. She is the Principal Investigator of an NSF-funded integrative graduate education and research training grant (IGERT) in Nanophotonics, the first such graduate training program in the U.S.
Douglas W. Hall
U.S. Department of Energy
Term: 1/1/12-12/31/14
Doug received a bachelor's degree in physics from Occidental College, Los Angeles in 1975 and a doctorate from the University of California, Davis in 1982 while a student employee at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He joined Corning in 1983 as a senior research scientist. In 1986 he initiated and led Corning's research project on erbium-doped fiber amplifiers for use in long-haul telecom systems. In 1991, he became the manager of the newly formed Optical Amplifier Development Department, where he was responsible for design and transfer to manufacture of single and multi-wavelength optical amplifiers. In 1996, Hall returned to Corning Research as manager of the Amplifier and Fiber Systems Research Department. In November 1998, he became the business technology director, Photonic Technologies, for which he was responsible for several departments that developed a variety of Optical Modules, as well as the development of pump lasers at the Corning Lasertron facility. In 2003, Corning Incorporated sold its Photonic Technologies Division to Avanex Corporation. Hall was appointed executive vice president of Avanex, responsible for its amplifier and dispersion compensation business unit. He rejoined Corning Incorporated in September 2005. He retired from Corning in March of 2010. In June 2011, Doug joined the Department of Energy as Portfolio Manager of the SunShot Initiative's Photovoltaic Manufacturing Initiative.
James D. Kafka
Newport Corporation
Term: 1/1/12-12/31/14
Jim Kafka attended the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, where he obtained a B.S. in Optics in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Optics in 1983, studying with Conger Gabel and Gerard Mourou. In 1983, he started as a Senior Scientist at Spectra-Physics Lasers, where he has held a series of positions with increasing responsibility; he is currently the Advanced Research and Development Director. He designed several of the company's most significant products, including the Tsunami, the first commercial ultrafast Ti:sapphire laser (1990), and the Millennia X, the first commercial 10 W solid-state green laser (1997). For this work, he was recognized as a Spectra-Physics Fellow in 1987. He also received the Thermo Electron Corporate Award for Technical Innovation in 2002 and the first Newport Corporation Strategic Patent Award in 2007 for his patent of the first diode-pumped double-clad fiber laser. Kafka has over 37 United States patents and multiple foreign equivalents. He has more than 30 publications in refereed journals and has made more than 35 presentations at CLEO, OSA topical meetings, SPIE conferences, and at major universities.
Byoung Yoon Kim
Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Tech (KAIST)
Term: 1/1/12-12/31/14
Byoung Yoon Kim is a professor in the Department of Physics at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), where he works in the field of fiber optics. Kim received his B. S. degree from Seoul National University in 1977, and an M. S. degree from KAIST in 1979, both in Physics. He received a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1985. From 1979 to 1982, he was a member of the research staff at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Seoul, where he worked on fabrication and characterization of optical fibers. From 1985 to 1989, he worked at Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University, as a Research Associate, and later, as Acting Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1990, he joined the Department of Physics at KAIST in Daejeon, Korea, where he served as chairman of the department (1995-1997). He was also a Visiting Professor in the EE Department at Stanford University (1990-2000). He was chairman and CEO of Novera Optics Inc. (2000-2008), which he founded. His research interests have been with fiber-optic devices for sensors and communications, including gyroscopes, few-mode fiber components, lasers and amplifiers, acousto-optic modulators, and fiber gratings.
John Koshel
Photon Engineering LLC
Term: 1/1/12-12/31/13
John Koshel has been the VP of Consulting/Principal Illumination Engineer at Photon Engineering for three years and an Adjunct Professor at the College of Optical Sciences/The University of Arizona for 12 years. Teaching, designing, and analysis of illumination systems in the solid-state lighting, display, and solar energy fields are his primary areas of focus. Previous positions include: Director of engineering Services (BRO), Asst. Professor Physics and Optics (Rose-Hulman), Senior Optical Engineer (Lambda Research, Spectrum Astro). Koshel has his BS and PhD from Institute Of Optics, University of Rochester.
Byoungho Lee
Seoul National University,
Term: 1/1/2012 - 12/31/2013
Byoungho Lee is a Professor at Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea. He received his PhD degree in 1993 from EECS, University of California at Berkeley. In September 1994 he joined the School of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University as a faculty member, where he became a full professor in 2005. He is a fellow of OSA and SPIE, and a member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology. He served as a topical editor of Applied Optics for six years and currently is an associate editor of the Journal of the Society for Information Display. Currently, he is the chair of OSA Holography and Diffractive Optics Technical Group, chair of the OSA Members and Education Services Council, and a member of the OSA Strategic Planning Committee. In the past he served as a Director-at-Large of OSA, a member of the Awards Committee of the Board of Directors of OSA, and a member of the External Relations Advisory Group of OSA. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Optical Society of Korea and the Korean Information Display Society. He received many awards including The Presidential Young Scientist Award of Korea (2002) and the Scientist of the Month Award of Korea (Sep. 2009). His research fields are 3D display, digital holography and plasmonics.
Susana Marcos
Consejo Sup Investigaciones Cientificas,
Term: 1/1/2013 - 12/31/2015
Susana Marcos is currently a Professor of Research at the Instituto de Optica, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones CientÃficas, Madrid, Spain, where she is the head of the Visual Optics and Biophotonics Laboratory. Since 2008, she has also served as the Director of the Institute of Optics (CSIC). She received her M.S. (1992) and Ph.D. (1996) in Physics from the University of Salamanca, Spain. She carried out her predoctoral research at the Instituto de Optica, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC), Madrid, Spain, in the field of physiological optics, working on a novel technique to resolve the foveal cones in vivo. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for three years at Stephen A. Burns' lab at the Schepens Eye Research Institute, Harvard University, and a recipient of a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Human Frontier Science Postdoctoral Fellowship. Susana Marcos has pioneered research in novel techniques to assess the optical properties of the ocular optics and the human retina. She has published more than 80 peer-reviewed publications (with over 2650 citations, h-index=30), and has been invited to lecture at over 100 international conferences and research centers. She holds seven patents, several licensed to industry.
Eric Mazur
Harvard University
Term: 1/1/11-12/31/13
Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University. An internationally recognized scientist and researcher, he leads a vigorous research program in optical physics and supervises one of the largest research groups in the Physics Department at Harvard University. After obtaining a PhD degree in experimental physics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1981, Dr. Mazur came to Harvard University in 1982. In 1984, he joined the faculty and obtained tenure six years later. Dr. Mazur has made important contributions to spectroscopy, light scattering, the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with materials, and nanophotonics. In 1988, he was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award. He is Fellow of the Optical Society and the American Physical Society, and he was named APS Centennial Lecturer during the Society's centennial year. In 2007 Dr. Mazur was appointed Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. In 2008, he received the OSA Esther Hoffman Beller Award and the Millikan Medal from the American Association of Physics Teachers. Dr. Mazur has held appointments as Visiting Professor or Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Leuven in Belgium, National Taiwan University in Taiwan, Carnegie Mellon University and Hong Kong University.
Lynn E. Nelson
AT&T Corp
Term: 1/1/13-12/31/15
Lynn E. Nelson is a Lead Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Labs-Research in Middletown, NJ. She received her Sc.B. in engineering from Brown University in 1991 and her M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993 and 1997, respectively. Her doctoral research focused on passive mode-locking of erbium- and thulium-doped fiber lasers. In 1997, she joined Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs, in Holmdel, NJ, where she worked on fiber nonlinearities, wavelength division multiplexing, and polarization mode dispersion. In 2000 she became technical manager of the Fiber Systems Testing Group for the Optical Fiber Solutions (OFS) business unit of Lucent and remained with OFS after its acquisition by Furukawa in 2001, where her research interests included high-capacity, long-haul transmission, Raman amplification, and higher-order polarization mode dispersion and compensation. She re-joined Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs in 2005 as a distinguished member of technical staff in the Government Communications Laboratory, where she worked on distributed fiber sensors and high power optical amplifiers. Since 2007 she has been with AT&T Labs, where currently her work is focused on high capacity, long-haul transmission, including 100 and 400Gb/s and modulation formats, as well as optical monitoring and polarization issues in AT&T's long-haul network.
Nelson has authored or co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications and four book chapters. She holds or has applied for 16 patents, and she is an OSA Fellow.
Gregory Quarles
Term: 1/1/13-12/31/15
Greg Quarles received his B.S. in Physics and Mathematics (1983) and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics (1985 and 1987, respectively) from Oklahoma State University. He specialized in the study of defects and impurities in solid state laser materials as an ASEE Fellow under the guidance of Richard Powell. Greg has worked in industry, in academia, and at a federal research laboratory, thus providing a unique perspective during his service to OSA.
In 1987, he joined Leon Esterowitz's group within the Optical Sciences Division at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, as a research physicist. His research there focused on the investigation and characterization of novel solid state lasers and host materials for generating tunable ultraviolet and near- to mid-infrared laser emission. This research expanded to investigate optical parametric oscillators throughout the infrared. In addition to these studies at NRL, Quarles's research included the investigation of tissue ablation rates with pulsed mid-infrared solid state lasers. While at NRL, Greg was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (1988-1992).
In 1992, Greg left NRL to join Lightning Optical Corporation as Director of Research and Development, tasked with establishing and expanding Crystal Growth, Crystal Fabrication, and R&D activities. In 1998, Lightning Optical was acquired by II-VI Incorporated, and he expanded the role of R&D and government leadership corporate-wide as Director of Government Relations. His efforts included managing corporate R&D programs which included commercialization of large diameter YAG crystal growth, ceramic laser material development, and optimization of manufacturing technologies including fabrication of nonlinear optical materials and miniaturization of lasers.
Jannick P. Rolland
University of Rochester
Term: 1/1/10-12/31/12
Jannick Rolland is the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester (UofR), where she also serves as Associate Director of the R.E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design and Engineering and directs the Optical Diagnostics and Applications Laboratory (ODALab). She also holds an appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and in the Center for Visual Science at UofR. Professor Rolland earned an Optical Engineering Diploma from the Institut d'Optique, France, and an MS and PhD in Optical Science from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. Upon completing her degree, Dr. Rolland joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) as a postdoctoral fellow, where she focused on learning vision and computer graphics while designing the first off-axis stereoscopic head-worn displays for medical visualization. She was appointed to lead the Vision Research Group for Medical Displays at UNC-CH (1992-96), where the team investigated the impact of the shape of objects on medical tasks. In 1996, she joined CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics at the University of Central Florida, where she founded the ODALab.
Laura Ann Weller-Brophy
FluoroLogic, Inc.
Term: 1/1/11-12/31/12
Laura Weller-Brophy is the CEO of FluoroLogic, Inc., conducting research, development and commercialization of a light-based system for the screening of cervical cancer. Laura has over 25 years development and management experience in the Telecom, Biomedical, Display, and Optics industries. Her expertise in technical leadership, strategy development, and IP management were built through her work at 3M, Corning, Inc., and Eastman Kodak. While at Kodak, she was a founding member of the Optical Display Films business, exceeding $20MM sales in their third year, acquired by Rohm and Haas. Laura has over 30 patents issued or pending. She holds BS, MS and PhD degrees from The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, and is a registered US patent agent.
Shin-Tson Wu
University of Central Florida
Term: 1/1/13-12/31/14
Prior to joining UCF in 2001, Dr. Wu was with Hughes Research Laboratories (Malibu, California) for 18 years. He received his Ph.D. in Physics/Quantum Electronics from University of Southern California, and BS in Physics from National Taiwan University. His research at UCF focuses on five areas: 1. Next-generation liquid crystal displays, 2. Adaptive lenses, 3. Laser beam steering, 4. Biophotonics, and 5. New photonic materials. Dr. Wu is a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, SID, and SPIE. He is a recipient of the 2011 SID Slottow-Owaki prize, 2010 OSA Jesoph Fraunhofer award, 2008 SPIE G. G. Stokes award and 2008 SID Jan Rajchman prize. He was the founding chief editor of the IEEE/OSA Journal of Display Technology. Dr. Wu has co-authored 7 books: "Introduction to Adaptive Lenses" (Wiley, 2012), "Transflective Liquid Crystal Displays" (Wiley, 2010), "Introduction to Flat Panel Display" (Wiley, 2008), "Fundamentals of Liquid Crystal Devices (Wiley, 2006), "Introduction to Microdisplays" (Wiley, 2006), "Reflective Liquid Crystal Displays" (Wiley, 2001), and "Optics and Nonlinear Optics of Liquid Crystals" (World Scientific, 1993), 7 book chapters, 400 journal papers, and 70 issued patents. Several of his patents have been implemented in display and photonic devices.
Jun Ye
University of Colorado at Boulder JILA
Term: 1/1/12-12/31/14
Jun Ye received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB), in 1997. His thesis, supervised by Dr. John Hall of JILA, documented the use of laser spectroscopy to achieve the highest measurement sensitivity of molecular absorptions to this day. Ye was then appointed an R.A. Millikan postdoctoral research associate and worked in Jeff Kimble's group at Caltech from 1997-1999. There he started a new project to trap a single atom inside a high-finesse optical cavity for studies of strongly coupled cavity quantum electrodynamics. In 1999, Ye was appointed an Associate Fellow of JILA, a physicist of NIST, and an assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado. Ye became a Fellow of JILA in 2001. He was appointed a Fellow of NIST in 2004 and a Professor of Physics adjoint at UCB in 2006. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2005 and a Fellow of The Optical Society in 2006. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2011.