Award Winners

Current Award Winners

Each year SPIE recognizes outstanding achievements through its awards program. The Awards Committee is pleased to announce the 2011 SPIE Award recipients.

Daniel Malacara Hernández, Centro de Invetigaciones en Optica, A.C. Leon Gto, Mexico, is the 2012 recipient of the Gold Medal Award in recognition of his significant contributions to the field of optics through his research, his books, and the establishment of Institutes in Mexico devoted to teaching and research in optics.

Robert A. Alfano, of The City College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, USA, is the inaugural recipient of the Briton Chance Biomedical Optics Award. Conferred in 2012, this award is presented in recognition of his pioneering work in the biomedical optics field, in addition to his outstanding track record of achievements in the development of biomedical instruments, especially supercontinuum and broadband laser sources.

Luke Lester, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA, is the 2012 recipient of the Harold E. Edgerton Award in recognition of his pioneering contributions to the development, characterization and integration of quantum dot mode-locked lasers as high-speed optical sources.

Yeshaiahu Fainman, University of Califoria, La Jolla California, USA, is the 2012 winner of the Dennis Gabor award in recognition of outstanding contributions and novel applications of ultrafast pulses and nanophotonics in information processing systems.

William J. Borucki, NASA Ames Reserach Center, Moffett Field, California, USA, is the 2012 recipient of the George W. Goddard Award in honor of 25 years of design and development of high-precision transit photometry techniques that enabled NASA's Kepler mission to revolutionize our knowledge about the frequency and distribution of extrasolar terrestrial planets.

The 2010 Rudolf Kingslake Medal and Prize is awarded to Joseph W. Goodman for his paper titled "Some properties of speckle from smooth objects" published in the June 2010 issue of Optical Engineering.

The Kingslake Award Committee recognizes Dr. Joseph Goodman for presenting novel theoretical and computational findings of symmetry properties of the Fourier plane spectrum of speckle from smooth surfaces and how these symmetries affect image speckle contrast.

Jan Olof Stenflo, ETH Zurich, Institute of Astronomy, Zurch, Switzerland, is the 2012 recipient of the G.G. Stokes Award in recognition of his wide-ranging and fundamental work on both the measurement and theory of polarized radiation, which has revolutionized our understanding of the sun's magnetic field, the quantity underlying all solar activity.

Hans Tiziani, Berneck, Switzerland, is the 2012 recipient of the Chandra S. Vikram award in recognition of his lifetime achievements in optical metrology and optical testing; his pioneering contributions to the field of high-precision microscopic surface and 3-D measurement and multisensor techniques; his work in deformation- and vibration analysis using double pulse techniques in digital holography; and his advances in heterodyne temporal speckle-pattern interferometry.

John H. Bruning, Pitsford, NY, USA, is the 2012 recipient of the Frits Zernike Award for Microlithography in recognition of his vision and its realization in deep-uv excimer projection lithography, phase-measuring interferometry, die-to-die mask inspection, as well as executive contribution in world-leadership production of specialty precision optical systems and specialized metrology instrumentation for the microelectronics, automotive, and optics industries.

Andrea Alù, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA, is the 2012 recipient of the Early Career Achievement Award in recognition of his pioneering contributions to optical metamaterials and plasmonic phenomena.

Wei R. Chen, University of Central Oklahoma, Oklahoma, USA is the 2012 Educator Award winner in recognition of his efforts to teach students not only the textbook subjects but also how to think and how to approach real-life problems; for inspiring students to be life-long learners; for encouraging students to contribute to society; and for promoting interdisciplinary learning in biomedical optics through research in laser cancer treatment.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), of the Australian Center for Precision Optics, Linfield, Australia, is the 2012 recipient of the Technology Achievement award in recognition of the CSIRO ACPO team’s world-leading expertise in optical fabrication, metrology and coating, which has contributed to science and technology in many international projects over more than thirty years.

Team Members include:
Dr. Bob Oreb (Chief Operating Officer)
Dr. Roger Netterfield (Chief Scientist)
Mr. Achim Leistner (Master Optician)
Mr. Jeff Seckold (Master Optician)
Dr. David Farrant (Principal Research Scientist - Optical Metrology)
Dr. Jan Burke (Senior Research Scientist - Optical Metrology)
Ms. Katie Green (Fabrication and Materials Manager)
Dr. Mark Gross (Senior Research Scientist - Optical Coatings)
Dr. Svetlana Dligatch (Senior Research Scientist - Optical Coatings)
Dr. Anatoli Chtanov (Electronics and Instrumentation Engineer)
Mr. Philip Fairman (Electronics and Software Engineer)
Ms. Edita Puhanic (Senior Optician)
Mr. Matthias Burger (Senior Optician)
Mr. Wayne Stuart (Optician)
Mr. Ron Bulla (Optician)
Mr. Terry Kinder (Mechanical & Instrumentation Engineer)
Mr. Neil Blenman (Mechanical & Instrumentation Engineer)
Ms. Khuen Wong (Project Secretary)

The 2011 President's Award is presented to John Pellegrino in recognition of his service as chairman of the SPIE Symposia Committee, his professionalism, and for his commitment to the Society in developing the SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing symposia into the success it is today.

The 2011 Directors' Award is presented to to Robert P. Breault, in recognition of his many years of exceptional leadership, dedication, and generous commitment of time, support, and inspiration to SPIE and the optics community.

Lihong V. Wang and Hsin-I Wu are the 2010 recipients of the Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award for their work, Biomedical Optics: Principles and Imaging. The Goodman Committee cite the book as playing a very important role in the instruction and understanding of biomedical optics, and noted that Biomedical Optics: Principles and Imaging, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2007, is proving to be an invaluable resource for researchers in the field and for the next generation of scientists.

Dr. Wang and Dr. Wu will accept the award at SPIE's Optics & Photonics meeting in August 2010 which SPIE is honored to announce will be presented by Dr. Joseph Goodman.