Letter from the Chair
Greetings and Happy New Year to all my fellow APS DLS Members,
It’s an honor and a pleasure to serve you as Chair of the APS’s Division of Laser Science. I would like to thank Roseanne Sension, the Past-Chair, for her vision and service that she has provided to the Division. I hope this year will bring our members lots of success in whatever endeavors you pursue, and specifically in your laser science related research.
As this year starts, please keep your eye on the DLS related conferences, specifically, the DLS Symposium at the APS March Meeting, and the Laser Science conference, held in conjunction with the OSA’s Frontiers in Optics Meeting. Other related conferences, such as DAMOP, and CLEO are also excellent venues to present your work, and to network with both long standing and new colleagues.
This past year in 2016, the APS/DLS elevated 7 of its members to the rank of Fellow. Selection to Fellow rank is obtained via review and selection by the Fellows Committee and forwarded to APS for confirmation. This year’s newly elected Fellow are: Harry Atwater (California Institute of Technology), Igal Brener, Sandia National Laboratories, Tobias Kippenberg (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Greg Salamo, (University of Arkansas-Fayetteville), Feng Wang (University of California, Berkeley), Gary Wiederrecht (Argonne National Laboratory), and Richard Ziolkowski (University of Arizona). Let’s offer our heartiest congratulations to our distinguished colleagues, for their significant contributions to our professional community.
Our most prestigious award, The Arthur L Schawlow Prize, was awarded to Prof. Louis DiMauro, from the Ohio State University. His citation reads "For groundbreaking work in several areas of high field and ultrafast optical science, from high harmonic generation and free electron lasers to attosecond science." Let us all congratulate Prof. DiMauro on his selection for the Schawlow Prize.
This year, the Carl E. Anderson Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, established in 2013 and endowed by Charlotte Anderson in 2015 in memory of her husband Carl E. Anderson in Laser Science was selected from an outstanding pool of applicants and finalists. It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge Mohammad Mirhosseini from California Institute of Technology who received the award with the following citation: "For his doctoral dissertation, Quantum Information with Structured Light".
As mentioned above, DLS plays an important role in organizing scientific sessions at several key meetings. The APS March Meeting has been a long standing conference for members of our community to showcase their research activities. This year, DLS has organized a "Focus Topic" at the March meeting, on "Optical Frequency Combs – Generation, Metrology and Applications". This Focus Topic will encompass the growing number of methodologies and techniques that are enabling unprecedented performance in metrology, optical communications and all-optical / optically assisted signal processing, and will feature 5 invited talks from well recognized institutions: NIST, CalTech, Univ. Colorado, Boulder, and CREOL at Univ. Central Florida.
The Conference on Lasers and Electro-optics (CLEO) is the biggest international conference that DLS co-sponsors. It will be held at the San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, California, USA, 14 – 19 May 2017. The conference covers topics in ranging from fundamental discoveries in laser science to laser applications and related, enabling technologies. Details of scheduled speakers, short courses, and upcoming registration and housing details can be found at: http://www.cleoconference.org/home/.
The DLS Annual Meeting, held in concurrently with the OSA Frontiers in Optics (FiO) meeting will be held September 17–21 2017 at the Washington Hilton, in Washington, DC. During this meeting, the DLS has been the proud sponsor of the Symposium on Undergraduate Research. The Symposium has been a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to present their research results at an international conference. The Symposium has played an important role in the professional development of young scientists at the undergraduate level. It should be noted that the Symposium has been directed and organized by Prof. Hal Metcalf (SUNY Stony Brook). His service and dedication to this effort has touched hundreds of undergraduate students, and I’d like to personally thank him for his continued engagement. Please keep this opportunity in mind, as funding opportunities exist to cover the expenses for travel and attendance, such as the DLS Student Travel Grants and the Child Care Grants programs for this conference as well as other DLS co-sponsored meeting.
Finally, the DLS is comprised of members like you. We are holding our elections for DLS Executive Committee and I’m hoping that you will exercise your right to vote and help make DLS your primary professional affiliation. Most importantly is our commitment to build our community. You can help by renewing your membership in DLS and encouraging your colleagues to join. To help build our future, student membership becomes an important tool, as well, and to facilitate new student memberships, DLS offers free membership for their first year. Please consider promoting student membership in any venues you believe are useful, e.g., in your E&M or optics/laser classes and lectures.
Comments or suggestions: delfyett@creol.ucf.edu