OSA - New Focus/Bookham Student Award

From 1997 to 2008, this student award program served to encourage research excellence, presentation prowess, and leadership in the optics community among OSA Student Members.  The program will not take place in 2009.

Past results

The 2008 New Focus/Bookham Student Award winner was announced on May 7, 2008, at CLEO/QELS in San Jose, CA.  This student award was established in 1997 to encourage research excellence, presentation prowess, and leadership in the optics community among OSA Student Members. The final stage of the three-part competition was an oral presentation session on May 6.  Richard Sandberg, JILA and Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, USA,  was announced the following morning as the winner of the $5,000 prize.  The other finalists were:

• Amit Agrawal, Univ. of Utah, USA
• Wenshan Cai, Purdue Univ. USA
• François Couny, Univ. of Bath, UK
• Umit Demirbas, Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, USA
• Amy Lytle, JILA and Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, USA
• Franklyn Quinlan, Univ. of Central Florida, USA

Ken Ibbs, Executive Vice President, New Focus/Bookham; the 2008 student finalists; and Rod Alferness, OSA President.

The 2007 New Focus/Bookham Student Award Finalists, Joseph Eberly, and Herman Chui

2007 Results

In 2007, seven finalists presented in a special session on May 8, at CLEO/QELS in Baltimore, Maryland. The results were announced the following day by Herman Chui, Director of Marketing, New Focus, in the CLEO/QELS plenary session. The top prize of $5,000 was awarded to Kenneth Chau, University of Alberta, Canada. The other six finalists (listed below) received $1,500. Congratulations to all seven!

Keisuke Lucas Goda, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Michael Chung-Yi Huang, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Hong Chuyen Nguyen, University of Sydney, Australia
Yoshi Okawachi, Cornell University, USA
Giovanni Volpe, Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, Spain
Ying Zhou, CREOL, University of Central Florida, USA

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2006 Results

First Place Winner of the $5,000 Prize
Virginia O. Lorenz, JILA, University of Colorado and NIST
Presentation: Three-pulse photon echo peak shift measurements in dense potassium vapor

Finalists (Each received a $1,500 Prize):
Andrew M. C. Dawes, Duke University
Presentation: Improving the bandwidth of SBS-based slow-light delay

Jonathan A. N. Fisher, University of Pennsylvania
Presentation: Linear and non-linear microscopy of neuronal activity in vitro and in vivo

Di Liang, University of Notre Dame
Presentation: GaAs-based high-index-contrast integrated optoelectronics

Yi-Hsin Lin, University of Central Florida
Presentation: Polarization-independent liquid crystal phase modulator with a large phase shift and low operating voltage

Iva Maxwell, Harvard University
Presentation: Sub-cellular nanosurgery in live cells using ultrashort laser pulses

Babak Momeni, Georgia Institute of Technology
Presentation: Compact photonic crystal superprism demultiplexers based on diffraction compensation

2006 Winners

2006 New Focus/Bookham Student Award Finalists with
Herman Chui (New Focus/Bookham) and
Eric Van Stryland, OSA President

2005 Winners

2005 New Focus/Bookham Student Award Finalists with
Nadim Maluf (New Focus/Bookham) and
Susan Houde-Walter, OSA President

First Place Winner of the $5,000 Prize
Gretchen Campbell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Presentation: Photon Recoil Momentum in Dispersive Media

Finalists (Each received a $1,500 Prize):
Ivan Amat-Roldán, ICFO – Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, Barcelona, Spain
Presentation: MEFISTO: Measuring the Electric Field of Ultrashort Pulses by Interferometric Spectral Trace Observation

Aaron Danner, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Presentation: Photonic crystal vertical cavity lasers and arrays

Preetpaul Devgan, Northwestern University
Presentation: Multichannel wavelength conversion of DPSK signals using four-wave mixing in highly-nonlinear fiber without cross-gain-modulation penalty

Zhi Jiang, Purdue University
Presentation: Spectral Line-by-Line Pulse Shaping

Sajjad A. Khan, CREOL, University of Central Florida
Presentation: 3-Dimensional Wide Angle Laser Beam Steering Using Liquid Crystals

Thomas P. White, CUDOS, University of Sydney, Australia
Presentation: Wide-angle transmission into photonic crystals

2004 Winners

The Optical Society of America and Bookham/New Focus Incorporated are pleased to announce the 2004 winners of the OSA Bookham/New Focus Student Awards.

Grand Prize Winner
Jason McKeever of the California Institute of Technology

Finalists:
Lukas Chrostowski, University of California Berkeley
James Edward Carey, Harvard University
Paulo C. Dainese, Jr., State University at Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil
Christiano J. S. de Matos, Imperial College London, UK
Aparna Bhatnagar, Stanford University
Kevin W. Holman, University of Colorado

Contact: OSA Awards Office
(1) 202 416 1960 or awards@osa.org

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