Professor Miguel Alonso:

Miguel A. Alonso is a professor at the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, since 2003. Currently he is also with the Institut Fresnel and the Ecole Centrale in Marseille, France as part of  A*MIDEX Chair of Excellence program.

He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America. He has been Associate Editor and Deputy Editor for Optics Express, Chair of Spotlight on Optics, Associate Editor for Optica, and currently serves as the Editor in Chief for Optics Letters.

Professor Alonso’s research is on mathematical aspects of wave propagation, in particular on the description and applications of beams with structured intensity and polarization distributions, optical coherence, and the connection between the ray and wave models of light.

Dr. Benedetta Marmiroli:

Benedetta Marmiroli works at the Austrian SAXS beam-line outstation at Elettra Synchrotron in Italy and is with the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Graz University of Technology, Austria. She is also collaborating with Elettra in the management of the Deep X-ray lithography beam-line.

She got her master in Materials Engineering at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at the University of Ferrara, both in Italy.

Her scientific interests involve the interdisciplinary combination of micro-fabrication and characterization techniques, both for the construction of micro-fluidic devices as new sample environment and for the development of novel materials for applications in chemistry and biology.

Dr. Kok-Sing Lim:

Kok-Sing Lim received his B.Eng in Telecommunication from the Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya in 2008 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the same university in 2012. Currently, he is with Photonics Research Center, University of Malaya.

His research interests include Fiber Bragg Grating, Optical Measurement and Instrumentation, Spatial Division Multiplexing Technology and Medical Laser Devices.

He is the associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Instrumentation and Measurement, a corporate member of Institute of Engineers Malaysia (IEM), a registered Professional Engineer (Telecommunication) with the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM) and a member of IEEE as well as OSA. He is the winner of ICO/ICTP Gallieno Denardo Award in 2020.

Professor Gerd Leuchs:

Professor Gerd Leuchs serves as an OSA Director at Large for a three year term, from 2020-2022.  He is the Director Emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, and an adjunct professor within the physics department of the University of Ottawa.  After 15 years in academic research at the Universities of Cologne, Munich and at JILA, Boulder, Colorado, he worked at a Swiss optics company for five years before becoming full professor at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. His scientific work includes quantum beats, photo-electron angular distributions in multi photon ionization, quantum noise reduced and entangled light beams and solitons in optical fibres, quantum communication protocols, focusing light beams and nanophotonics.

For five years, Gerd Leuchs led the German gravitational wave detection group (1985-1989). He has been a Visiting Fellow of JILA, Feodor-Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Heisenberg Fellow of the German Science Foundation, Visiting Professor at the Australian National University, at the University of Adelaide and the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. He is member of the German Physical Society, the German Society for Applied Optics, the European Physical Society and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and Fellow of the Institute of Physics, of The Optical Society (OSA), and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He holds honorary degrees from the Danish Technical University and Saint Petersburg State University.

In 2005, he received the Quantum Electronics Prize from the European Physical Society, and in 2018, the Herbert Walther Prize jointly awarded by OSA and the German Physical Society (DPG). He won an advanced grant from the European Research Council, a mega-grant from Russia as well as a Julius-von-Haast Fellowship award from the Royal Society of New Zealand. With his research, Gerd Leuchs is contributing to the field of quantum technology. He is member of a number of advisory boards for quantum technology application and innovation in Germany and abroad. Over the years, he served on several OSA committees.

Professor Donna Strickland:

Professor Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for developing chirped pulse amplification with Gérard Mourou, her PhD supervisor at the time. They published this Nobel-winning research in 1985 when Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester in New York state. Together they paved the way toward the most intense laser pulses ever created. The research has several applications today in industry and medicine — including the cutting of a patient’s cornea in laser eye surgery, and the machining of small glass parts for use in cell phones.

Strickland was a research associate at the National Research Council Canada, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a member of technical staff at Princeton University. In 1997, she joined the University of Waterloo, where her ultrafast laser group develops high-intensity laser systems for nonlinear optics investigations.

Strickland was named a Companion of the Order of Canada. She is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Premier’s Research Excellence Award and a Cottrell Scholar Award.  She received the Rochester Distinguished Scholar Award and the Eastman Medal from the University of Rochester. Strickland served as the president of the Optical Society (OSA) in 2013 and is a fellow of OSA, the Royal Society of Canada, and SPIE (International Society for Optics and Photonics). She is an honorary fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering as well as the Institute of Physics. She received the Golden Plate Award from the Academy of Achievement and holds numerous honorary doctorates.

Strickland earned a PhD in optics from the University of Rochester and a B.Eng. from McMaster University.