Lithography leader, International Year of Light driver honored
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| SPIE President-Elect Toyohiko Yatagai congratulates Harry Levinson on winning the 2014 SPIE Directors' Award. |
SAN DIEGO, California, and BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA -- Semiconductor industry leader Harry Levinson and International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015) visionary John Dudley were announced as winners of top awards from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics last week in San Diego. Awards were presented to Levinson and Dudley along with other awards announced earlier this year, including the Gold Medal of the Society won by James Harrington, during a gala banquet Wednesday evening as part of SPIE Optics + Photonics in the San Diego Convention Center.
Dr. Levinson won the SPIE Directors' Award for contributions to the society, the community, and the development of lithography and process control for semiconductor fabrication. He is manager of Strategic Lithography Technology and a Senior Fellow at GLOBALFOUNDRIES.
Levinson said he was initially surprised to learn of his award. Long active in the SPIE Advanced Lithography meeting and community, he noted that while that event is the premier meeting in its field and that participation in it is universally "normal," it is not typical in that community to participate in SPIE beyond "SPIE Litho." Only after becoming involved in the society's Publication Committee and serving on the Board of Directors did he learn the full extent of the society's activities, he said. Since then, he has joined SPIE Past President Bill Arnold in actively encouraging others to become more involved and helped increase the number of SPIE Fellows from the lithography community.
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| John Dudley, winner of the 2014 SPIE President's Award, talks in an SPIE.tv video interview about the importance of the International Year of Light. |
Prof. Dudley won the SPIE President's Award for his vision and determination in driving the designation of IYL 2015, which will boost the visibility of light-based technology around the world. He is head of the Optoelectronics and Photonics research section of the CNRS research institute FEMTO-ST at the Université de Franche-Comté). The award was presented in absentia, as Dudley was unable at the last minute to attend.
In a comment after the event, Dudley said that bringing the proposal to the United Nations "was a wonderful opportunity to explain the importance of light science and technology to a new community of international diplomats. And it was immensely satisfying to see how open-minded and interested they were in learning about the optical technologies that underpin modern society and which promise so much in areas of global development and improved quality of life."
Dudley thanked the SPIE Board of Directors and SPIE President Philip Stahl -- who was a member of the team led by Dudley who visited the UN to advocate for the proposal -- for their essential roles in the proposal's success. "Quite simply, we would not have the opportunity to celebrate an International Year of Light without your support."
Other awards announced earlier this year and presented last week were:
Read more about the award winners in the SPIE press releases:
SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. The Society serves nearly 256,000 constituents from approximately 155 countries, offering conferences, continuing education, books, journals, and a digital library in support of interdisciplinary information exchange, professional networking, and patent precedent. SPIE provided more than $3.2 million in support of education and outreach programs in 2013.
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