2016 A.E. Conrady Award

Lacy Cook, senior principal engineering fellow at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems (USA), is the 2016 recipient of the SPIE A.E. Conrady Award. Cook is recognized for his efforts in advancing the realm of reflective design forms during more than 30 years of designing optical systems.

The A.E. Conrady Award is given annually in recognition of exceptional contributions in design, construction, and testing of optical and illumination systems and instrumentation. The award recognizes developments of new equipment, techniques, and applications for designing, testing, analyzing, and/or evaluating optical and illumination systems, components, and theories.

“His innovative optical designs are used on virtually every military platform in service today,” said John Anagnost, principal engineering fellow at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. These applications include surveillance sensors and targeting pods on airplanes, UAVs, space sensors, and kinetic kill vehicles used in missile defense.

In addition to his numerous contributions to military systems, Cook has designed a wide range of space systems for earth and planetary sciences, including the Hughes and Raytheon products for weather detection and Martian probes such as THEMIS that helped discover the presence of water on that planet.

Anagnost notes that Cook is the only Raytheon employee to ever win a Pioneer award from the US National Reconnaissance Office for his lifetime technical contributions to national security. Many of his expired patents are now used routinely throughout the industry, such as his three-mirror anastigmat optical design.

“His expertise is recognized across the industry as well as within the government,” Anagnost said.

Cook has also received the Hughes Group Patent Award, the Hughes Hyland Award, the Lifetime Achievement Raytheon Technology Excellence Award, the Hughes SCS Patent Award, and the Raytheon Corporate Technology Excellence Award.

Cook will receive the A.E. Conrady Award in August at SPIE Optics + Photonics in San Diego.

For nearly six decades, SPIE has presented annual awards to recognize significant achievements and contributions in advancing the science of light.

Look for other stories about award recipients for 2016 in this issue and the October edition of SPIE Professional.

Nominations for the 2017 SPIE awards were due 1 June and will be announced in January 2017 or earlier.

More information: spie.org/awards.

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