Donald C. O’Shea received a Bachelor of Physics from the University of Akron, a Master of Science in Physics from Ohio State University, and a PhD in Physics from Johns Hopkins University. Following his work at Hopkins, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Gordon McKay Laboratory at Harvard University where, in 1970, he joined the faculty of the School of Physics. In July 2004 he retired as Emeritus Professor of Physics. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Optical Sciences Center of the University of Arizona and at the University of Oulu, Finland.

O'Shea is a Fellow of the Society and of SPIE. He was president of SPIE in 2000 and served as editor of its flagship journal, Optical Engineering, from 1998 to 1999 and from 2001 to 2009. He received the 1996 Esther Hoffman Beller Medal “for his contributions to optics education, including key leadership and ideas for the development of the OSA Optics Discovery Kit, the cornerstone for OSA education activities at the K-12 level.”

O'Shea's research involves the design, analysis, and construction of ultrafast devices.