The ICO Award Winners : ICO Prize
The ICO Prize has been established in 1982 and is presented annually to a person who has made a noteworthy contribution to Optics before reaching the age of 40. Every year, the ICO Prize Committee issues a call for nominations that is published in the ICO Newsletter. The recipients are listed below (the 1988 Prize was changed to 1989 in order to coincide with the year of the award).
1982: Antoine Labeyrie, France
A. Labeyrie graduated from Ecole SupŽrieure d’Optique and UniversitŽ de Paris-Sud, Orsay. A Directeur de Recherche at Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches GŽodynamiques, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and a membre correspondant of the French Academy of Sciences, he has been recognized for his pioneering work on astronomical imaging beyond the atmospheric turbulence and telescope mirror quality limited resolution, and in particular his invention of speckle interferometry.
1983: James R. Fienup, USA
A graduate of Stanford University, J.R. Fienup is a research scientist with ERIM, Ann Arbor. The ICO Prize recognized his contribution to the field of image restoration, phase retrieval from amplitude data, and image estimation, including in particular iterative estimation algorithms applied to optical imaging, coherence, and remote sensing.
1984: J. Christopher Dainty, UK
J.C. Dainty received his doctorate from Imperial College in 1972. In 1984 he was appointed the Pilkington Professor of Applied Physics at Imperial College. His contributions span a period of more than 15 years. His book &laqno; Image Science È, written jointly with R. Shaw, is regarded as the standard treatise on the subject. He edited the book &laqno; Laser Speckle and Related Phenomena, the primary reference in this field. More recently his research was centered on astronomical speckle imaging, quantum-limited imaging, and optical information processing.
1985: Sergei I. Stepanov, USSR
S.I. Stepanov graduated from the M.I. Kalinin Polytechnical Institute in Leningrad. A Candidate in Physical-Mathematical Sciences, he is a senior research physicist at the A.F. Ioffe Physical Technical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Leningrad. The subject of his thesis was light diffraction in anisotropic media. His present interest relate to dynamic holography, the physics of photorefractive crystals, and diffraction phenomena in volume structures.
1986: Kensuke Ikeda, Japan
A graduate of Kyoto University where he is presently a Professor in the Research Institute for Fundamental Physics, K. Ikeda has made outstanding contributions to quantum dynamics, including in particular quantum chaos, to the nonlinear dynamics of optical systems, and to turbulence.
1987: Alain Aspect, France
A. Aspect graduated from Ecole Normale SupŽrieure de l’Enseignement Technique and UniversitŽ de Paris-Sud. A physicist at Ecole Normale SupŽrieure, he was selected for his work on the confirmation by optical means of the violation of Bell’s inequalities, which provides support for the traditional interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and demonstrates that no local, deterministic hidden variable theory can apply.
1989: Demetri Psaltis, USA and Greece
A graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University and an Associate Professor in the Electrical Department of the California Institute of Technology, was awarded the prize for his contributions to optical information processing, holography, pattern recognition, neural networks, optical memories and optical devices.
1990: Rosario Martinez-Herrero, Spain
A professor in the Department of Optics at Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Herrero contributed to the new expansions for the coherence functions of partially coherent and partially polarized electromagnetic fields, the proof that planar sources of different states of coherence can generate identical output fields, and generalizations of the basic radiometric concept of radiance to fields generated by two-dimensional stationary partially coherent sources.
1991: David A.B. Miller, UK and USA
A graduate of St Andrews and Heriot-Watt Universities in Scotland, D.A.B. Miller moved to AT&T; Bell Laboratories to become the head of the Photonics Switching Device Research Department. Miller’s name is related to the quantum confined Stark effect, which he not only discovered and investigated both theoretially and experimentally , but also exploited for new applications to optical devices. Well known among those is the self-electro-optical effect device (SEED).
1992: Wolfgang Peter Schleich, Germany
W.P. Schleich graduated from the University of Munich and is a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Ulm. He was recognized for his work on the nonclassical states of light and the determination of the phase of nonclassical radiation. He contributed to the description of phenomenon of squeezing in terms of interference in phase space and to the discovery of oscillations in the photon statistics of the squeezed states.
1993: Aleksander K. Rebane, Estonia and Switzerland
A graduate of the University of Tartu and a candidate of science from the Institute of Physics of the Estonian Academy of Science, A.K. Rebane moved to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich to become a senior research assistant. Rebane has contributed to understanding the properties of frequency multiplexed holograms, through the causality principle, and to the investigation of the properties of referenceless time-and-space holograms.
1994: Emmanuel Desurvire, France and USA
E. Desurvire graduated from Universities of Paris VI and Nice. He worked at Stanford University, AT Bell Laboratories and Columbia University. He has been a researcher with Alcatel Alsthom in Marcoussis since 1993. He is being recognized for his work on active optical fibers and devices and in particular his seminal contributions to erbium-doped fiber amplifiers.
1995: Tony F. Heinz, USA
A graduate of Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, T.F. Heinz worked with the IBM Research Division and joined Columbia university as a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics in 1995. He has played a pivotal role in the development and application of an entirely new area of laser spectroscopic studies for surface and interface analysis, introducing nonlinear and time-resolved optical techniques, such as surface second order harmonic generation, that have been widely adopted in laboratories worldwide.
1996: Vladimir Buzek, Slovakia
A graduate of Comenius University, Bratislava, the Moscow State University and the Joint Institute Nuclear Research in Dubna, V. Buzek is a research professor at the Slovak Academy of Sciences and at Comenius University. He has been recognized for his work on squeezing and other non-effects in photon statistics, atom-field interactions in microcavities and other theoretical contributions to the development of quantum optics.
1997: Andrew M. Weiner, USA
A graduate of MIT, Prof. Weiner assumed his current position as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in 1992. Professor Weiner’s pioneering contributions make possible linear filtering, shaping, and analog processing of optical signals in the femtosecond time domain, and enable a range of sophisticated new applications for ultrashort light pulses.
1998: David Mendlovic, Israel and Haldun Ozaktas, Turkey
Mendlovic graduated from Tel-Aviv University and …zaktas from Middle East Technical University, Ankara. They received the award in recognition of their contributions to several areas of optical information processing, and particularly for their joint efforts in the development of the fractional Fourier transform and its application.
1999: Hugo Thienpont, Belgium
A graduate of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) , H. Thienpont is the research director of the Ç laboratory for photonics È at the VUB and the promoter of research projects for the Flemish Foundation for Scientific Research (FWO), the Flemish Institute for Science and Technology (IWT), the Belgian Inter-University Excellence Centers (IUAP) and the European Community Microelectronics Advanced Research Initiatives (EC-MEL-ARI). He has been recognized for his contributions to photonics, optical computing and parallel optics.
2000: Stefan W. Hell, Germany
A graduate of University of Heidelbeirg, S.W. Hell joined the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gšttingen to establish an independent research group. He has been awarded in recognition of his innovative work on increasing resolution in far field optical microscopy.
2001: Nabeel A. Riza, Pakistan and USA
A graduate of Illinois Institute of Technology and Caltech, Riza joined CREOL in1995 where is currently Professor and Head of the Photonic Information Processing Systems Laboratory. Over a decade of research, Nabeel A. Riza is responsible for the invention of several pioneering optical beam control structures that have strongly impacted fields such as array sensor controls, interferometry, signal processing, fiber-optic switching and controls, and optical scanning.
2002: Prize not accorded
2003: Benjamin J. Eggleton, Australia
A Ph.D in Physics from the University of Sydney in 1996, Prof. Eggleton is currently a Federation Fellow, Professor of Physics and the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS). His main research achievements have beed developed in nonlinear optics, photonic bandgap structures, optical fiber gratings, air-silica microstructured fibers, tunable optical fiber devices, microfluidics, dispersion compensation techniques, Raman amplification and optical regeneration.
2004: Ashok V. Krishnamoorthy, USA and India
He obtained the BS in Engineering (with honors) from CALTECH in 1986. The MS in Electrical Engineering/Optics from University of Southern California in 1988 and the PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 1993. He made noteworthy contributions in the area of opto-electronic integrated circuits. Specifically, for developing a method where arrays of optical devices, such as detectors, modulators, and vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) are attached to CMOS chips. Results have played a key role in several industry milestones
2005: Immanuel Bloch, Germany
Immanuel Bloch studied physics at the University of Bonn, with a visit later Stanford University. He received his PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich for his work on atom lasers and phase coherence properties of atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in the group of Theodor W. Hänsch (Nobel Prize 2005 shared with John Hall and Roy Glauber). Subsequently, he became junior group leader for ultracold quantum gases at the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching and the Ludwig-Maximilians University in the same group. Since October 2003, at just 31 years of age, he was appointed to full professorship of physics (C4) at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany. Immanuel Bloch has become the first to crack the BEC wave and regularly arrange several hundred of these special atoms into a glowing grid or optical lattice, with future potential applications in quantum computing.
The ICO Award Winners : ICO Galileo Galilei Award
The ICO Galileo Galilei Award has been established in 1994 and is presented annually to a person has made outstanding contributions to the field of Optics in countries where the development of Optical Technology is significantly below average, or where difficult economic or social conditions are encountered, and access to scientific and technical facilities or sources of information is lacking. The recipients are listed below.
1994: Ion N. Mihailescu, Romania
A graduate of the Central Institute of Physics in Buchares and a senior scientist at the Institute of Atomic Physics and a professor at Bucharest University, I.N. Mihailescu is recognised for his studies of the nanoscale surface modifications by laser irradiation, including pulsed laser deposition of compounds in vacuum or in chemical reactive gases.
1995: Rajpal S. Sirohi, India
R.S. Sirohi graduated from Agra University and from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and is a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. He has conducted extensive research work in the areas of optical metrology and optical testing and has introduced techniques for the measurement of displacement, angles and contours by optical means.
1996: Daniel Malacara, Mexico
D. Malacara graduated from the National University of Mexico and from the University of Rochester, N.Y., USA. A scientist with Centro de Investigaciones en Optica, Leon, Gto., he contributed to the foundation of several Optics Research centers in Mexico and of the Mexican Academy of Optics. A designer and constructer of optical instruments, including telescopes, he is famous for his book on Ç laqno; Optical Shop Testing È, which has been translated in many languages.
1997: Natalyia D. Kundikova, Russia
A graduate of Moscow University and a senior scientist of the Joint Nonlinear Optics Laboratory, Electrophysics Institute of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Science, N.D. Kundikova is also the head of the Optis and Spectroscopy Department at the Chelyabinsk University. She has been recognized for her theorical achievements related to the interaction between light propagation and polarization, as well as their experimental demonstration.
1998: Ajoy K. Ghatak, India
A graduate of Delhi University and from Cornell University, A.K. Ghatak is a research professor at the physics department of the Indian Institute of Technology. He has been recognized for his important research contributions in developing new methods for the analysis of fiber and integrated optic waveguides, quantum well structures, and the analysis of graded index optical imaging systems.
1999: Mario Garavaglia, Argentina
A graduate of Universidad Nacional de la Planta, Mario Garavaglia is the founder of CioP (Centro de Investigaciones de Opticas) and has been recognized for his scientific contributions in the fields of lasers, spectroscopy, interferometry, and holography, as well as their applications to industry, medicine and biology and for his promotion of optics education an research in South America.
2000: Vladimir P. Lukin, Russia
A graduate of Tomsk State University (TSU) and director of the Wave Propagation Division of IAO (Institute of Atmospheric Optics of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Vladimir P. Lukin has been recognized for his scientific contributions on light propagation through turbulent media and on adaptive optics, as well as their applications.
2001: Kehar Singh, India
A graduate of Agra University and from the Indian Institute of Technology, K. Singh of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, has been recognized for his scientific contributions in the areas of statistical and information optics and for his contributions in education in optics in India.
2002: Rashid Ganeev, Uzbekistan
A graduate in Engineering Physics from Tashkent Polytechnic Institute and Ph.D. degree in Physics and Mathematics from the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. Rashid Ganeev has been recognized for his scientific contributions, both theoretical and experimental, for developing new methods for nonlinear frequency conversion of high power laser radiation in non linear crystals and characterization of nonlinear optical properties of metal, semiconductor and polymer media.
2003: Cid Bartolomeu de Araujo, Brazil
A graduate of the Pontif’cia Universidade Cat—lica do Rio de Janeiro and Post-Doctorate in Harvard University, Cid B. de Araujo has been recognized from his scientific contributions in nonlinear optics, lasers and applications, multiphonic processes, parametric generation, spectroscopy of special glasses and organic materials as well as in photonics and integrated optoelectronic.
2004: Milivoj Belic, Serbia and Montenegro and Caesar Saloma, Phillipines
Milivoj Belic is a professor of optics at the Institute of Physics, Belgrade. The research interests of Prof. Belic centered on nonlinear optics and nonlinear dynamics of optical systems. His work in nonlinear optics was concerned with the wave mixing in photorefractive media, optical computing, and spatial solitons. His most important contribution is the establishment and maintenance of strong research group in Belgrade, working under adverse conditions, yet producing outstanding research results.
Caesar Saloma is a professor of physics at the National Institute of Physics of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. He has introduced in the Phillipines investigations on the use of the laser fluorescence confocal microscopy in imaging optically-thick biological samples then conforming a pioneering team. He has investigated as well on the efficiency of laser confocal microscopy and multi-photon excitation microscopy for imaging applications in highly-scattering media.
The ICO Award Winners : ICO/ICTP Award
In 1999, ICO, the International Commission for Optics, and ICTP, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, agreed to establish a joint prize, called the ICO/ICTP Award. It is reserved for young researchers from developing countries (as defined by the United Nations), who conduct their research in a developing country. The award is given to scientists less than 40 years old, who are active in research in Optics and have contributed to the promotion of research activities in Optics in their own or another developing country. The recipients are listed below.
2000: Dr Arbab Ali Khan
A graduate of Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Pakistan, where he is now working as assistant professor, A.A. Khan worked mainly in the field of quantum computing. He has also worked in the fields of optical and computer generated holography, fiber and integrated optics and in lasers and optics instrumentation implementing optical computing via classical methods.
2001: Arashmid Nahal and Fernando Perez Quintian
A graduate of the University of Tehran and from Kharkov State University, A. Nahal had been working under the supervision of Prof. Vladimir K. Miloslavsky on the influence of the polarization on radiation-induced formation of spontaneous periodic structures in thin photosensitive films.
A graduate of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, F.P. Quintian is working as an Assistant at the School of Engineering of that University. . His research interests are light scattering, metrology, laser ultrasonics and interferometry.
2002: Alphan Sennaroglu
A graduate of Cornell University and an Associate Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering at Ko University, A. Sennaroglu’s research focuses on the development of solid-state lasers, spectroscopic investigation of new laser media, experimental and theoretical study of thermal effects, ultrashort pulse generation, and nonlinear optics.
2003: Robert Szipöcs
A graduate of Technische University of Budapest and a reseacher at the Research Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics in Budapest, R. Szipöcs’s research focuses on femtosecond nonlinear pulse propagation in microstructure (photonic crystal) optical fibers, femtosecond time resolved spectroscopy and two-photon microscopy.
2004: Imrana Ashraf Zahid, Pakistan, and Revati Nitin Kulkarni, India
Dr. Imrana Ashraf Zahid from Quaid-I-Azam University (Pakistan) and Dr. Revati Nitin Kulkarni from the International Institute of Information Technology, Pune (India), both researchers were sharing this 2004 prize. Dr. Asharaf was awarded for her contributions in the field of Quantum and Atom Optics and Lasers, and Dr. Kulkarni was awarded for her contributions in the field of Adaptive Optics. Both scientists are young researchers who have been pursuing their carriers in a developing country as defined by UN.
2005: Sarun Sumriddetchkajorn, Thailand
A researcher from the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), Pathumthani, Thailand’s Ministry of Science and Technology.He made his PhD at CREOL, Florida, USA.The main subject of his research was multiwavelength fiber-optic switch array retro reflective structures, under both theoretical and experimental studies to analyze optical crosstalk level. He has developed an optical touch switch based on total internal reflection (TIR) to be used by disable persons.