George I Stegeman received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and was the first recipient of the Cobb Family Chair in Optical Sciences and Engineering at the UCF. The principal interest of Dr. Stegeman's research group was the experimental study of nonlinear optics in waveguide structures, especially the properties of spatial solitons in various regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Of particular interest are solitons in photonic crystals, in semiconductor optical amplifiers, in quasi-phase-matched doubling crystals and in the discrete systems afforded by coupled arrays of channel waveguides. He published over 700 papers during his career at the University of Central Florida, College of Optics and Photonics.

Stegeman received many awards and honors during his career including APS Fellowship, 2013 Honorary Doctorate from INRS University, Canada, and 2001 Teacher of the Year Award from the CREOL Association of Optics Students (CAOS).He also received the Herzberg Medal for achievement in Physics of the Canadian Association of Physicists and served on various Editorial Boards including Wave Electronics (1979-1983), Optics Communications (1986-2000), Journal of Nonlinear Optics (1991), and as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Optical Society of America B in 2001. He was a Fellow of OSA and recipient of the 2003 R. W. Wood Prize.