FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For More Information Contact:
Colleen Morrison
Optical Society of America
cmorri@osa.org
202.416.1437

OSA Celebrates 90 Student Chapters in its
90^th Anniversary Year

April 26, 2006 ( Washington, DC ) -- The Optical Society of America (OSA) is pleased to announce that it has reached the milestone achievement of establishing its 90^th student chapter during its 90^th anniversary year. The new student chapter, located at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Australia, was formed in April 2006. The chapter is being led by Christian Romer Rosberg as president and faculty advisor Yuri Kivshar, an OSA Fellow.

“OSA welcomes the Australian National University, ” said Elizabeth Rogan, OSA's executive director. “Our student chapter program offers exciting opportunities for collaboration and networking.”

While ANU has no dedicated school of optics and photonics, it has a College of Science that includes the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering and a Faculty of Science that have lively research and teaching programs in optics. Two Australian Research Council Centres of Excellence in optics are located at ANU – The Centre for Ultrahigh Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, and the Centre for Quantum-Atom Optics. Approximately 39 postgraduate students are now enrolled in optics fields across the University.

OSA has plans to feature this 90^th chapter during its 90^th anniversary festivities at its annual meeting, Frontiers in Optics, taking place in Rochester, NY from October 8–12.

OSA student chapters offer members a large variety of benefits and resources to enrich their educational and professional lives. Activity and travel grants, guest lecturer programs, and year-round networking opportunities are available to OSA chapters to support students with an interest in optics and photonics. For more information, visit http://www.osa.org/studentcenter/.

About OSA

Celebrating its 90^th anniversary in 2006, the Optical Society of America (OSA) brings together an international network of the industry's preeminent optics and photonics scientists, engineers, educators, technicians and business leaders. Representing over 14,000 members from more than 80 different countries, OSA promotes the worldwide generation, application and dissemination of optics and photonics knowledge through its meetings, events and journals. Since its founding in 1916, OSA member benefits, programming, publications, products and services have set the industry's standard of excellence. Additional information on OSA is available on the Society's Web site at www.osa.org.