Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue Univ., and Sir John Pendry, Imperial College London, have been named winners of the 2010 Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics, along with Aleksei Zheltikov, Lonomosov Moscow State Univ. Shalaev and Pendry are active in the program committee of the Plasmonics: Nanoimaging, Nanofabrication, and their Applications conference at SPIE Optics + Photonics. Shalaev is a Fellow of SPIE.
Shalaev is known for his contributions to nanophotonics, the optics of nanocomposites including fractals and percolation systems, and optical metamaterials. His research group has further extended the possible applications of optical metamaterials by showing the feasibility of cloaking objects in the visible range, as well as novel approaches for engineering and controlling space for light based on transformation optics.
Pendry is recognized for his pioneering work on the structure of surfaces and their interaction with electrons and photons. He founded the field of metamaterials with a negative refraction index, paving the way for perfect lenses and other devices.
The Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics is presented annually at the Physics of Quantum Electronics Winter Colloquium, and was awarded this year on 3 January.
