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The Optical Society
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Elsevier Awards $25,000 to OSA Foundation for Emil Wolf Outstanding Student Paper Competition; Finalists Announced

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3—The OSA Foundation today announced the receipt of $25,000 from Optics Communications in support of the Emil Wolf Outstanding Student Paper Competition. Finalists for the competition were also announced. The Wolf Competition recognizes innovation, research excellence and presentation abilities of student researchers presenting their work during the Optical Society’s (OSA) Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO). Optics Communications is published by Elsevier, a leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services.

“The OSA Foundation is pleased to accept this generous contribution from Elsevier,” said OSA Foundation Chairman G. Michael Morris. “The Wolf Competition helps inspire students to strive for top quality research in the sciences and the field of optics, and donations such as this are essential to this program’s success.”

The Emil Wolf Outstanding Student Paper Competition was established in 2008 in honor of University of Rochester Professor Emil Wolf’s many contributions to science and OSA. The first competition will take place this year at FiO 2009, Oct. 11-15 in San Jose, Calif. Up to four finalists were selected from each of the seven FiO submission categories. One winner from each category will receive a complimentary one-year OSA student membership, an award stipend and an award certificate. A list of finalists appears below.

“Emil Wolf and Optics Communications have enjoyed a long-standing relationship since he became an Advisory Board Member just two years after it was founded in 1969,” said Elsevier Publishing Director Physics Charon Duermeijer. “Elsevier is committed to supporting young scientists in all scientific disciplines to help them advance in their fields and we hope that the Wolf Competition will thrive for many years to come.”

The 2009 Wolf Competition finalists are:

Category: Optical Design & Instrumentation

Amber Beckley, University of Rochester, USA
Anastacia Manuel, University of Arizona, USA
Florian Fournier, University of Central Florida, USA

Category: Optical Sciences

Wenjie Wan, Princeton University, USA
Sergiy Mokhov, Univesity of Central Florida, USA
Daniel Herrmann, Max-Planck Institut für Quantenoptik, Germany

Category: Optics in Biology & Medicine

Ashwin Parthasarathy, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
Neil Terry, Duke University, USA
Diwakar Turaga, Washington University School of Medicine, USA

Category: Optics in Information Science

Ori Katz, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Christopher Barsi, Princeton University, USA
Santosh Tripathi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Category: Photonics

Anika Kinkhabwala, Stanford University, USA
Weijian Yang, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Volker Sorger, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Jeffrey Shainline, Brown University, USA

Category: Quantum Electronics

S. Sensarn, Stanford University, USA
Henrique Pires, Leiden University, Netherlands
Yaron Bromberg, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Rafi Weill, Technion, Israel

Category: Vision & Color

Xin Wei, Indiana University, USA
Tom Wright, Hospital For Sick Children, Canada

About the OSA Foundation
The OSA Foundation was established in 2002 to support philanthropic activities that help further the Optical Society’s mission by concentrating its efforts on programs that advance youth science education, provide optics education and resources to underserved populations, provide career and professional development resources and support awards and honors that recognize technical and business excellence. The grants funded by the OSA Foundation are made possible by the generous donations of its supporters as well as the dollar-for-dollar match by OSA. The Foundation is exempt from US federal income taxes under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is a public charity. To learn more about the OSA Foundation or to find out how to donate, please visit www.osa-foundation.org or email foundation@osa.org.

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