Kavli Laureates Roger Angel and Jerry Nelson meet President Obama in Oval Office

President Barack Obama talks with U.S. recipients of the 2010 Kavli Prize in the Oval Office on 6 June. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

SPIE Fellow Jerry Nelson and long-time SPIE author and conference program committee member Roger Angel were among seven U.S. recipients of the 2010 Kavli Prizes who met with President Barack Obama yesterday at the White House. The prize winners were recognized for their contributions to astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience.

Nelson -- founding director of the Center for Adaptive Optics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Keck Observatory scientist -- and Angel -- founder and director of the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Mirror Lab -- shared the 2010 astrophysics prize with Raymond Wilson of the European Southern Observatory.

Both Nelson and Angel have been active participants at SPIE events including the biennial Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation symposium, and SPIE Optics + Photonics, where Angel is author this year of a paper on "Reflectance optimization using thin film coating on concentrating photovoltaic optics" (8018-19).

Read the Kavli Foundation press release about the Kavli Laureates' visit with President Obama.

Read the SPIE Newsroom feature on the 2010 Kavli Prize awards.