Zeev Zalevsky wins ICO Prize for 2008
Zeev Zalevsky, a professor and researcher at the Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is the winner of this year’s ICO Prize for contributions to optics.
The 2008 ICO Prize winner has been exploring the limits of optical super resolution.
The ICO Prize, which was established in 1982 to be awarded annually to an individual who has made a noteworthy contribution to optics and published or submitted for publication before he or she has reached the age of 40, has been awarded this year to Zeev Zalevsky.
Zalevsky was recognized for “his achievements and significant contribution in the field of optical super resolution, in particular for his work in theoretical and experimental definition of various approaches for exceeding Abbe’s classical limit of resolution.”
Zalevsky was born in Russia in 1971 and received his BSc and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from Tel-Aviv University in Israel in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He is currently a professor of electro-optics in the school of engineering at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. His major fields of research are optical super resolution, nano-photonics and silicon photonics, infiber devices and microwave photonics.
In his work in the field of super resolution Zalevsky helped invent various ways to overcome diffraction and the geometrical limitations of detectors by performing adaptation and conversion of spatial degrees of freedom from the spatial domain into non-spatial domains (such as time, colours, code and polarization state), allowing the multiplexing of this spatial information and later on its extraction and reconstruction. He also worked on the axial extension of depth of focus and its relation to visual optics sciences.
Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Spatial information transmission using orthogonal mutual coherence coding: (a) the overall optical output of the system without applying super resolution; (b) the obtained result after applying the super-resolving algorithm for the one-dimensional case.
In addition to his scientific activities, Zalevsky has helped found several start-up companies in various fields of electro-optics. Currently he is head of the electro-optics track in the school of engineering at Bar-Ilan University and leads a research group and laboratory with 15 PhD and masters students. Zalevsky coordinates several research grants in topics related to his fields of interest, which are funded by national agencies and high-tech companies. He is also the current head of the nano photonics group in the new nanotechnology centre being established at Bar-Ilan University.
In 2007 Zalevsky was awarded the Krill Prize for excellence in scientific research by the Wolf Foundation for his achievements in free-space optical systems and methods for enhanced imaging and sensing, electro-optical in-fiber and waveguide-based devices for data sensing, processing and RF photonics.
Zalevsky has published two books, 12 book chapters, more than 170 refereed papers and he holds more than 10 issued patents. He has delivered many invited talks in various conferences in electro-optics and has taken part in organizing several international scientific events. It is expected that Zalevsky will be delivering the ICO Prize lecture in one of the forthcoming major ICO meetings (details will be published in a future issue of the ICO Newsletter).
Figure 1 is from Zalevsky’s paper “Spatial information transmission using orthogonal mutual coherence coding.” (Z Zalevsky, J Garcia, P Garcia-Martinez and C Ferreira 2005 Opt. Let. 20 2837-2839.) The authors used the mutual coherence function of the illumination to code spatial information and exceed the diffraction limitations of an imaging system. In figure 1a they present the image as it is obtained without coherence coding, and in figure 1b they used coherence coding and obtained improvement of the spatial features that can be resolved in the US Air Force (USAF) resolution target. The demonstration of super resolution in this case was one-dimensional.
The ICO Prize committee for the term 1 October 2005 to 30 September 2008 consisted of Yoon Kim as chair and A Friesem, J Love, G Jin and S Bagayev as members. For the term 1 October 2008 to 30 September 2011 the chair will be Min Gu ([email protected]) from the Centre for Micro-Photonics, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, John Street, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia. Calls for the 2009 ICO Prize are now open. Nominations must be sent to Min Gu no later than 15 April 2009.