About
In Memoriam: Peter Domachuk,
Jan 01, 2013
Photonics community mourns loss of Peter Domachuk
Peter Domachuk, a member of the OSA Young Professionals Program, passed away in the first days of January 2013 after a sudden illness. He was 33.
Peter did his undergraduate and postgraduate degree in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, Australia. His Ph.D. was on the topic of optofluidics and he was supervised by Prof. Ben Eggleton. He was one of the first Ph.D. student graduates of the CUDOS ARC Centre of Excellence program and was well known in the CUDOS community. (CUDOS is a research consortium between seven Australian Universities). In 2006, Peter went on to a postdoctoral position at Tufts University with Prof. Fio Omenetto on the topic of photonic crystal fibers and silk photonics. In 2009, he returned to the School of Physics at the University of Sydney as a Research Fellow and was awarded a prestigious ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the CUDOS group at the University of Sydney to work in the area of biophotonics.
Peter published many high impact papers on the topic of optofluidics and biophotonics and was active in the community. At the University of Sydney he initiated a new program in biophotonics (silk photonics and optofluidics) and established new laboratories, supervised students and was building linkages and commercialization opportunities. He was the coordinator for the Sydney University Masters in Photonics program and Chair of the Sydney University IPOS 2010 Symposium on bio-photonics. The symposium was attended by over 180 people and attracted many high profile international participants.
Peter was a valued member of the University of Sydney, CUDOS and the photonics community and a great colleague and friend. He will be sorely missed. The university has received many expressions of sorrow from people around the world. They send their thoughts to Peter's family and friends at this terrible time.
To make a memorial donation to the OSA Foundation in honor of Peter Domachuk, please visit www.osa-foundation.org/give .
This obituary was contributed by the CUDOS ARC Centre of Excellence in Photonics Centre for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, School of Physics, University of Sydney, Australia.
