Members in the News
SPIE member Kristina M. Johnson, dean of Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering (Durham, NC), has been appointed provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at The Johns Hopkins University. She will be the first woman in the university's history to hold that leadership post at Johns Hopkins.
Johnson, among the pioneers of applications of liquid crystals, including micro displays for high-definition projection television, brings extensive expertise to the position. Including her tenure as dean at Duke, she has also served as a member of the Science Foundation Ireland, on corporate advisory boards, and has founded several technology companies.
She holds 44 patents and more than 140 refereed journal publications. She is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and IEEE, and a winner of numerous awards.
In 2004, Johnson received the highest recognition by the Society of Women Engineers for her more than 20 years of outstanding contributions to the field of engineering. Johnson was also inducted into the Women In Technology International Hall of Fame.
Under her leadership, Duke engineers established research initiatives in bioengineering, photonics, materials and environmental engineering.
Florian Fournier, an SPIE member and graduate research assistant at the College of Optics & Photonics, University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL), was selected as the 2007 Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship recipient. Fournier's supervisor is Jannick Rolland, associate professor of optics.
The award was presented at the UK Optical Design Meeting on 19 September, at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, UK. The award is a $5,000 cash award supported by the Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship Fund.
The Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship was established in 1998 to honor Michael John Kidger, a well-respected educator, design software developer, and member of the optical science and engineering community.
The 2007 SPIE Poland Chapter Maksymilian Pluta Award was granted to Wieslaw Wolinski for "significant contribution to the development of laser technology."
Wolinski is a leading authority in Poland on lasers and optoelectronic devices. From 1978 to 1981 he was a head of the Institute of Microelectronics and Optoelectronics at the Warsaw University of Technology. Until his retirement in 1999 he served as a head of the Optoelectronics Division of the same institute.
In 1991 he was elected a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PASci), and since 1991 he has been a chair of the Polish Optoelectronics Committee of the Association of Polish Electrical Engineers. In 1987, he was instrumental to the establishment of the SPIE Poland Chapter, and has been a member since then.
The award is named for Maksymilian Pluta, the founder and long-time chair of the chapter, who died in 2002.
SPIE and the Optical Society of America have renamed their jointly sponsored Congressional Fellowship program to the Arthur H. Guenther Congressional Fellowship. The new name honors the achievements and contributions of the late Guenther, who was a Fellow of both societies and an outspoken advocate for the optics and photonics community to the public and to the U.S. government.
"Just as Art did, Congressional Fellows choose a unique path in their careersone that combines an uncommon blend of scientific expertise and awareness of the public good," says SPIE President Brian Culshaw. "This is clearly the 'path less traveled,' one that requires enthusiasm, talent, and courage to be successful. Art is a role model for the men and women who follow that path of scientific excellence and public service."
The OSA/SPIE Congressional Fellowship program was established in 1999. Congressional Fellowships are designed to provide a unique public policy learning experience, demonstrate the value of science-government interaction, and bring technical backgrounds and external perspectives to the decision-making process in Congress.
SPIE members were honored this year with distinctions from the Optical Society of America (OSA).
SPIE Fellow M. J. Soileau (left), University of Central Florida (Orlando, FL), received the Esther Hoffman Beller Medal, recognizing outstanding contributions to optical science and engineering education, for his "distinguished and long-standing service to the optics education and research communityand specifically for establishing CREOL (the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers) as a major optics center."
Stephen D. Fantone, Optikos Corporation (Wakefield, MA), was awarded this year's Distinguished Service Award, recognizing outstanding service to the optical community and to the OSA.
Shanhui Fan, Stanford University (Stanford, CA), received the Adolph Lomb Medal, recognizing noteworthy contributions to optics before reaching the age of 35, for his fundamental work in nanophotonic structures.
J. Gary Eden, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was awarded the C. E. K. Mees Medal, given in recognition of interdisciplinary and international contributions, "for seminal interdisciplinary contributions to ultraviolet lasers, photochemical vapor deposition, ultrafast spectroscopy, and microplasma devices, and to strengthening international collaborations in these areas of optics and photonics."
Kenneth Chau of the University of Alberta, Canada, was named the winner of the OSA-New Focus/Bookham Student Award, for his paper and presentation titled "Magnetically anisotropic photon transport."
James L. Fergason, Fergason Patent Properties (Menlo Park, CA), received the David Richardson Medal, recognizing contributions to optical engineering, primarily in the commercial and industrial sectors, "for outstanding contributions to the understanding of the physics and optics of liquid crystals, and particularly for his pioneering contributions to liquid crystal display technology."
