OSA News
Optical Society of America Awards 2004 Top Honors to 20
July 28, 2004 ( Washington , DC )—The Optical Society of America is pleased to announce twenty recipients of its overall, general distinction, and specialty awards for 2004. These award winners join prestigious past recipients in their commitment, initiative and creativity in the optics field. This year's winners include: David J. Wineland, Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Endowment ; Steven K. Case, Edwin H. Land Medal ; Janice A. Hudgings, Esther Hoffman Beller Medal ; Alexander A. Sawchuck, Distinguished Service Award; Randy A. Bartels, Adolph Lomb Medal ; David R. Williams and Heidi Hofer, Archie Mahan Prize ; Chungte Bill Chen, David Richardson Medal ; Rangaswamy Srinivasan, James J. Wynne, and Samuel E. Blum, R.W. Wood Prize ; Costas Fotakis, OSA Leadership Award/New Focus-Bookham Prize; Erich P. Ippen, Charles Hard Townes Award ; Peter G. Eliseev, Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award ; Jens Biegert, Allen Prize ; David E. Pritchard, Max Born Award ; C. Randy Giles, Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize ; Richard A. Mathies, Ellis R. Lippincott Award ; Brian John Orr, William F. Meggers Award ; and John Krauskopf, Edgar D. Tillyer Award .
“OSA awards recognize exceptional accomplishments in the field. This year's recipients have been dedicated, creative, and innovative in their advancement of the science of light,” said Elizabeth Rogan, executive director. “Winning such a prestigious award is a highlight in the winners' outstanding careers.”
The selection process for each of the awards is stringent, with all nominees evaluated by a selection committee. While the criteria differ for each award, the judging process remains the same. A nomination form is submitted, along with a brief citation of the nominee's accomplishments, emphasizing those that make him/her a candidate for the particular award, a one-page narrative description touching on the most significant events in the candidate's career, a curriculum vitae and a minimum of four letters of reference for the candidate. The OSA Board of Directors appoints a committee to oversee each selection process. The committee is then responsible for evaluating each applicant and choosing the person most deserving of the award. Finally, the committee's recommendations are presented to the OSA Board of Directors for final review and approval.
“The OSA Board of Directors is proud to bestow awards on this year's recipients,” said OSA president, Sir Peter Knight. “The winners have advanced the science of optics and the entire industry through their persistence and ingenuity.”
The awards to be presented are as follows:
Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Endowment
Recipient: David J. Wineland
The highest award conferred by the Society for overall distinction in optics, this award is presented to David J. Wineland for development of laser-manipulated quantum engineering at the single-atom level and application of these methods to quantum logic systems, atomic frequency standards, and fundamental tests of quantum mechanics. He is currently a NIST Fellow and ion-storage group leader in the Time and Frequency Division at Boulder, CO. As the Ives Medal winner, Wineland has been invited to present a plenary address at OSA’s annual meeting. This award is funded by the Jarus W. Quinn Ives Medal Endowment.
Edwin H. Land Medal (co-sponsored with the Society for Imaging Science and Technology)
Recipient: Steven K. Case
Co-sponsored with the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, the Land Medal is given in recognition of pioneering entrepreneurial creativity that has had a major public impact. This year's award goes to Steven K. Case, founder and chairman of CyberOptics Corp., for pioneering work in laser-based inspection systems, and the highly successful application of these systems in the electronics industry. The Land Medal is endowed by the Polaroid Foundation.
Esther Hoffman Beller Award
Recipient: Janice A. Hudgings
Janice A. Hudgings has been awarded the Beller Award, recognizing outstanding contributions to optical science and engineering education, for innovative teaching methods and for her involvement in guiding undergraduate physics and engineering students in original, state-of-the-art, publishable research in optics and solid state physics. Dr. Hudgings works with students as Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics at Mount Holyoke College . This award is endowed by the estate of Esther Hoffman Beller.
Distinguished Service Award
Recipient: Alexander A. Sawchuk
This year's award, which honors outstanding service to the optical community and OSA, is presented to Alexander A. Sawchuk for 23 years of dedicated efforts on behalf of OSA, including vital contributions to publications, meetings, international relations and general governance. A professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and deputy director of the Integrated Media Systems Center at the University of Southern California, Dr. Sawchuk's contributions to OSA have included chairing the Society Objectives and Policy Committee and Technical Council, as well as serving as a publications editor and chair or member of various other committees, including a current role on the OSA Foundation Board. The Distinguished Service Award is endowed by contributions from individual members and the American Optical Corp. in memory of Stephen M. MacNeille.
Adolph Lomb Medal
Recipient: Randy A. Bartels
The Lomb Medal, recognizing noteworthy contributions to optics before reaching the age of 35, goes to Randy Bartels
for pioneering contributions to the coherent control of light, atoms and molecules, including the shaped-pulse optimization of high-order harmonic soft X-ray radiation. Dr. Bartels received his doctorate in 2002 from the University of Michigan , performing his research in ultrafast and nonlinear optics at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) in Boulder , Colo. In January 2003, he joined the faculty of Colorado State University . This award is endowed by the Adolph Lomb Memorial Fund.
Archie Mahan Prize
Recipients: Heidi Hofer and David R. Williams
The Mahan Prize recognizes the best feature article in Optics & Photonics News. This year's award goes to Heidi Hofer and David R. Williams of the University of Rochester for their article “The Eye's Mechanisms for Autocalibration.” Worthy of special mention are their clearly explained, well- illustrated examples that include tests that readers can perform themselves. This award is funded through the bequest of former OSA Treasurer Archie Mahan.
David Richardson Medal
Recipient: Chungte Bill Chen
Recognizing contributions to technical optics, the Richardson Medal is presented to Chungte Bill Chen for remarkable achievements in applying diffractive optical elements to the design of classical and conformal optical systems to obtain wide fields of view along with excellent aberration correction . Chen is a senior engineering fellow with Raytheon in Southern California . This award is endowed by Howard Cary.
R.W. Wood Prize
Recipients: Rangaswamy Srinivasan, James J. Wynne, and Samuel E. Blum
The Wood Prize recognizes an outstanding discovery, a scientific or technological achievement or an invention. The team of Srinivasan, Wynne and Blum is being honored for its discovery of pulsed ultraviolet laser surgery, wherein laser light cuts and etches biological tissue by photoablation with minimal collateral damage, leading to healing without significant scarring. This work was done when all were at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center . While Dr. Wynne is still with IBM, Dr. Srinivasan now has his own consulting company, UVTech Associates, and Dr. Blum has retired. This award is endowed by the Xerox Corporation.
OSA Leadership Award/New Focus - Bookham Prize
Recipient: Costas Fotakis
Recognized for his decade-long leadership of, and personal research contribution to, the field of laser applications to art conservation as manifested through publications, conference organization and international advocacy, Costas Fotakis has been selected to receive the OSA Leadership Award/New Focus - Bookham Prize. This award is presented to recognize an individual or a group of optics professionals who have made a significant impact in the field of optics and/or made a significant contribution to society. Dr. Fotakis is currently director of the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) at FORTH (Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas) and professor of physics at the University of Crete as well as director of the Ultraviolet Laser Facility operating at FORTH . This award is funded by New Focus Inc., a division of Bookham Technology.
Charles Hard Townes Award
Recipient: Erich P. Ippen
Erich P. Ippen is receiving the C. H. Townes Award in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of quantum electronics. He is being honored for his many outstanding, pioneering and sustained contributions to ultrafast science, ultrafast technology and fundamental nonlinear optics. Dr. Ippen worked at Bell Laboratories for 12 years before joining the faculty of MIT, where he is now Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering and professor of physics. This award is funded by the Townes Award Endowment Campaign with contributions from Bell Laboratories, Hewlett-Packard, and the Perkin Fund.
Nick Holonyak, Jr. Award
Recipient: Peter G. Eliseev
Honoring his original and pioneering contributions to the physics and technology of semiconductor lasers, beginning with homojunctions, progressing to heterostructures of InGaAsP/InP, InGaAsSb/GaSb and including ultra-low-threshold quantum-dot structures, Peter G. Eliseev is being presented the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award. This award recognizes significant contributions to optics based on semiconductor materials, including basic science and technological applications. Since 1995 Prof. Eliseev has been at the Center for High Technology Materials, University of New Mexico , Albuquerque , on leave from the P. N. Lebedev Physics Institute (FIAN) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This award is endowed by SDL, Inc. and Donald and Carol Scifres.
Allen Prize
Recipient: Jens Biegert
For an exceptional interdisciplinary contribution combining the fields of coherent interactions and adaptive optics, leading to multiple wavelength guidestars, Jens Biegert has been awarded this year's Allen Prize presented for outstanding contributions to atmospheric optics by a graduate student. Dr. Biegert received a master of science degree from the University of New Mexico (UNM) in 1998 and his doctorate in 2001 from the Technical University Munich. Since July 2001, he has been group leader in attosecond science at ETH Zurich . This award is endowed by Robert Allen.
Max Born Award
Recipient: David E. Pritchard
This year's recipient of the Max Born Award, presented in recognition of outstanding contributions to physical, theoretical or experimental optics, is David Pritchard for his creative application of light to new forms of spectroscopy, to manipulation and trapping of atoms, and for pioneering the new fields of atom optics and atom interferometry . Pritchard has been at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1968, where he is now Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and is currently working on atom optics and interferometry with Bose Einstein condensates. This award is endowed by the United Technologies Research Center .
Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize
Recipient: C. Randy Giles
Randy Giles of Lucent Technologies has been selected to receive the Joseph Fraunhofer Award recognizing significant accomplishments in optical engineering. He is being honored
for pioneering contributions to optical fiber communication including the engineering and application of the erbium-doped fiber amplifier, fiber-Bragg-grating stabilized pump lasers and MEMS optical cross-connects. Giles currently directs research programs at Bell Laboratories that include the study of new optical materials, the characterization and utilization of light in optical communications, and the development of optical networking technologies. This award is endowed by the Baird Corporation.
Ellis R. Lippincott Award (co-sponsored with the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy)
Recipient: Richard A. Mathies
A professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, Richard Mathies has been selected to receive the Lippincott Award for his innovative contributions to experimental and interpretive methods in resonance Raman spectroscopy, and the application of these methods to elucidate ultrafast dynamical processes in photochemistry and photobiology. The Lippincott Award recognizes outstanding contributions to vibrational spectroscopy and the selection committee consists of members from all three societies. This award is funded by OSA, the Coblentz Society and the Society for Applied Spectroscopy.
William F. Meggers Award
Recipient: Brian John Orr
Brian Orr is being honored with the Meggers Award for advancing molecular spectroscopy by experiment and theory on infrared- and Raman-ultraviolet double resonance, coherent Raman spectroscopy, cavity ringdown spectroscopy, photoelectron spectroscopy, nonlinear optics and tunable coherent light sources . The William F. Meggers award honors outstanding work in spectroscopy. Dr. Orr is professor of molecular and optical physics and director of the Centre for Lasers and Applications at Macquarie University in Sydney , Australia . This award is endowed by the family of William Meggers.
Edgar D. Tillyer Award
Recipient: John Krauskopf
Awarded biennially in recognition of distinguished work in the field of vision, this year's Edgar D. Tillyer Award goes to John Krauskopf for inventive work in many aspects of vision, and especially for psychophysical and electrophysiological experiments that have changed the way post-receptoral and cortical color vision mechanisms are conceived and studied. Dr. Krauskopf was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories for 20 years and has been a senior research scientist, research professor and visiting scholar at New York University since 1986. This award is endowed by the American Optical Company.
OSA bestows these awards annually, with the formal presentation ceremony taking place the morning of October 12, 2004 during the Society's annual meeting, Frontiers in Optics, which this year occurs October 10-14 in Rochester , NY . More information about OSA awards program, previous award winners, and the annual meeting can be found on OSA's web site at www.osa.org .
About OSA
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 more than 15,000 members from approximately 100 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 .
Editor's Note: Complete biographies for and photos of the recipients are available upon request.
Contact:
Colleen Morrison
Optical Society of America
202.416.1437
cmorri@osa.org
Advancing the Science and Technology of Light
