2021 Joseph Fraunhofer Award / Robert M. Burley Prize Winner

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The Optical Society Names Zeev Zalevsky the 2021 Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize Recipient

The Optical Society is pleased to announce that Zeev Zalevsky, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, has been selected as the 2021 recipient of the Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize. Zalevsky is honored for significant contributions to the field of optical super-resolution including the invention of many novel concepts bypassing Abbe’s limits of diffraction and the geometric limits set by the sensor.

Zeev Zalevsky received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Tel-Aviv University, Israel. He is currently a full Professor in the faculty of engineering at Bar-Ilan University. In addition, he is the director of the Nano-Photonics Center at the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Bar-Ilan.

Zalevsky has made many important contributions to the field of optical super resolution. He formulated early basic concepts of optical super resolution and presented ideas that can be traced to many of the super resolving imaging methods used today in microscopy, such as NSOM, structured light imaging, localization microscopy and others. He has introduced basic concepts involving time, field of view, wavelength, polarization and coherence multiplexing for bypassing diffraction limited resolution limitations. His work is published widely, and many of his inventions and patents have been commercialized into startup companies, benefitting not only academia but industry as well.

He has received several awards such as the International Commission for Optics (ICO) Prize/Abbe Medal, Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research from the Wolf Foundation, Juludan Prize for Advancing Technology in Medicine, Lean and Maria Tauenblatt Prize, Image Engineering Innovation Award, and the SPIE Prism Award. He is a Fellow of OSA, SPIE, European Optical Society, IEEE, Institution of Engineering and Technology, Institute of Physics, the Society for Imaging of Science & Technology (IS&T), and the American National Academy of Inventors (NAI). He has published over 450 refereed journal papers and over 250 conference proceeding papers, has more than 50 issued patents and has authored 6 books, edited an additional 3 books and 30 book chapters.

First presented in 1982, the Fraunhofer Award recognizes significant research accomplishments in the field of optical engineering, and honors the contributions that Joseph Fraunhofer made to the field. The prize was added in 1992 in memory of Robert M. Burley, who exemplified many of the highest attributes of the optical engineer and was the first recipient of the award. The award and prize are endowed by the Baird Corporation, the Burley Family and Prof. Shin-Tson Wu.