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26 October 2010
OSA Elects Donna T. Strickland as 2011 Vice President
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Lyndsay Meyer
The Optical Society
+1.202.416.1435
lmeyer@osa.org
OSA Elects Donna T. Strickland as 2011 Vice President
Strickland to serve as OSA president in 2013; Three directors at large also elected
ROCHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 26—The Optical Society (OSA) is pleased to announce that its members have elected Donna T. Strickland of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada as its 2011 vice president. Three directors at large were also chosen during this year’s election: Naomi J. Halas of Rice University, Eric Mazur of Harvard University, and Jannick P. Rolland of the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics.
By accepting the vice presidency, Strickland makes a four-year commitment to OSA’s Board of Directors. As vice president, she will automatically become president-elect in 2012 and then the society's president in 2013, followed by a one-year term as past president.
Strickland has been an active OSA member for several years, including holding leadership roles in the society’s publishing, awards and meetings initiatives, as well as on the Board of Directors. Strickland served on the editorial board of OSA’s member magazine, Optics & Photonics News, and is currently a topical editor for OSA’s journal Optics Letters. She has chaired both the Archie McMahon and R.W. Wood prize committees. She served on the program committee for OSA’s International Conference on Ultrafast Phenomena and is the program co-chair for OSA’s annual meeting, Frontiers in Optics 2010. She was a member of the society’s Member & Education Services Council from 2004-2006. She served as an OSA director at large from 2005-2007 and sat on the Board’s Executive Committee during 2006-2007. Currently, she is the OSA-appointed vice president to the Board of the International Commission for Optics (ICO).
“Donna’s years of service to OSA have helped advance the society in many of our core initiatives – from editorial efforts and educational programming to meetings and board leadership,” said Elizabeth Rogan, OSA CEO. “Donna is well-respected in the field of optics, conducting award-winning research at some of the top optics institutions in the world. She has the right combination of expertise, creativity, dedication and enthusiasm to lead the society in 2013.”
Strickland received her B. Eng. degree in engineering physics from McMaster University in 1981 and her Ph.D. in optics from the University of Rochester in 1989. Along with her Ph.D. supervisor, Gérard Mourou, Strickland co-invented Chirped Pulse Amplification, which made it possible to amplify ultra-short pulses to unprecedented levels. From 1988-91, Donna was a research associate at the National Research Council of Canada. The following year, she was a physicist with the laser division of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. In 1992 she became a member of the technical staff of Princeton's Advanced Technology Center for Photonics and Opto-electronic Materials. Strickland joined the physics department of the University of Waterloo as an assistant professor in 1997, where she now serves as associate professor and associate chair of the department. There, she leads an ultrafast laser group that develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations. Strickland’s awards and accolades include being elected as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 1998 and an OSA Fellow in 2008, and winning a Premier’s Research Excellence Award in 1999 and a Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement in 2000.
Along with Strickland, the new directors at large, Halas, Mazur, and Rolland, will begin their terms on Jan. 1, 2011, replacing three outgoing members of the Board of Directors. The new directors at large will hold their positions for three years.
“We are honored to welcome Naomi Halas, Eric Mazur and Jannick Rolland to the OSA Board,” said Rogan. “The 16,000-plus members across the globe will be well represented with the talents and professionalism of the new board members. We were pleased to see a record number of votes in this election as well.”
About OSA
Uniting more than 106,000 professionals from 134 countries, the Optical Society of America (OSA) brings together the global optics community through its programs and initiatives. Since 1916 OSA has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing educational resources to the scientists, engineers and business leaders who work in the field by promoting the science of light and the advanced technologies made possible by optics and photonics. OSA publications, events, technical groups and programs foster optics knowledge and scientific collaboration among all those with an interest in optics and photonics. For more information, visit www.osa.org.
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