Awards information for SPIE Laser Damage

2023 award winners

Thank you to the chairs for selecting these winners and recognizing the brilliance of each researcher's work.

Award	Award winner name	Paper number
The Alexander Glass Best Oral Presentation Award Identifying, understanding, and supressing of ns laser damage precursors in dielectric thin films	Eyal Feigenbaum, Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (United States) Paper Title: All-glass metasurface laser optics for lensing, antireflections, and waveplates	12726-51
The Arthur Guenther Best Poster Award Nonlinear absorption in TiO₂ and HfO₂ thin films	Gabriel Petrisor Bleotu, Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (Romania); Univ. din Bucuresti (Romania); Ecole Polytechnique (France) Paper Title: Target current and spatial modulations analysis for LIDT measurements using fs laser irradiation	12726-81
The MJ Soileau Best Student Paper Award Experimental investigations of femotsecond and laser-induced damage on multi-layer mirrors	Sylvain Grosjean, CEA-Cesta (France) Paper Title: Influence of linear-to-circular polarization conversion on laser-induced damage of fused silica at 351 nm	12726-48

Explanation of annual awards for Laser Damage

Each year, in honor of the symposium's founding organizers and key chairs, one presentation is selected in each of three categories — oral, poster, and student presentation — by conference co-chairs on the basis of scientific excellence and quality of presentation. These include:

The Alexander Glass Best Oral Presentation Award
1st place best oral presentation, $500 and honorary award

The Arthur Guenther Best Poster Award
1st place best poster presentation, $500 and honorary award

The MJ Soileau Best Student Paper Award
1st place best student presentation, $500 and honorary award

Announcement of winners

Awards are announced during the call for papers for the next year's symposium—meaning, winners from the 2023 program are announced in the spring of 2024 (showing now).

Winners are recognized at the opening ceremony of the upcoming Laser Damage Symposium. Winners are also honored with an engraved trophy and a small monetary honorarium.

Eligibility and application

To be considered, the author must:

Submit a paper or poster at SPIE Laser Damage Symposium
Identify themselves as a student during abstract submission to be considered for a student award
Be the lead manuscript author and submit it to SPIE, according to author deadlines
Must attend the conference and present the paper or poster

Person at computer submitting a paper or poster at SPIE Laser Damage Symposium

Recipient selection

The SPIE Laser Damage Symposium student papers and posters will be assessed and awarded by symposium chairs. Contributions will be judged for technical merit, relevance of the topic to the industry, and the author’s ability to explain the work.

Historical precedent

Awards have longstanding significance

The annual Best Oral Presentation and the Best Poster Award were renamed in 2016 to honor the founding organizers for this meeting, Alexander J. Glass and Arthur H. Guenther. In 2017, The MJ Soileau Best Student Paper Award was added to the annual awards.

Founding organizers of SPIE Laser Damage: Alexander J. Glass and Arthur H. Guenther

These awards are intended to foster participation and advance the research in laser-induced damage, development of materials for high power lasers, and associated technologies, and will provide some financial assistance to researchers, engineers, and students involved in the laser damage community.

The awards are supported and approved by the Laser Damage co-chairs, with funds matched by SPIE.