Dr. Valeria Garbin

Dr. Valeria Garbin did her MSc in Physics (2003) at the University of Padova and her PhD (2007) at the University of Trieste in Italy. She was a Rubicon fellow in the Physics of Fluids group at the University of Twente (2007-2009), and a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania (2009-2012), before starting her research group at Imperial College London in 2012. She joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at TU Delft in 2019 as an Associate Professor. Valeria has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant, was the 2018 recipient of the McBain medal (RSC/SCI), and the 2020 recipient of the Soft Matter Lectureship (RSC).

Her research areas include microscale transport phenomena in soft and biological matter to develop innovative solutions for sustainable processes and product, drug delivery, bioprocessing, and advanced materials. She is also interested in the  behavior of soft materials under flow. In these research studies, the technologies such as high-speed video microscopy, microfluidics, acoustofluidics, small-angle X-ray scattering, optical tweezers, acoustical tweezers, and other fluidic and imaging techniques are incorporated.

Professor Cather Simpson

Wikipedia

Professor Simpson's research interests lie with the fundamental photodynamics of molecules in the condensed phase.  She and her students use ultrafast laser spectroscopy to study rapidly evolving molecules as they convert light to more useful forms of energy.

Professor Cather Simpson earned a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies - Echols at the University of Virginia, and a PhD in Medical Sciences at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine as a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow.

During her PhD studies, she became increasingly interested in understanding and exploiting the fundamental interactions of light with molecules. After a Department of Energy Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, she joined Case Western Reserve University in 1997 to pursue this research.

In the Chemistry Department at CWRU, she earned tenure, was promoted to Associate Professor and started the Center for Chemical Dynamics. Along with her laser research, she fostered innovation in undergraduate teaching, women in science, and ethics in education and research.

In 2007, Professor Simpson joined The University of Auckland to take on a new challenge - to establish and direct the a new multi-user Photon Factory. Her appointment is held jointly in Chemistry and Physics.

The core mission of the Photon Factory is to bring the rich versatility of high-tech, short laser pulses to NZ academic and industry innovators. The facility has grown rapidly since it opened in 2010 - they now have over twenty students and employees who work on dozens of academic and commercial projects.  These range from evaluating the photobehaviour of improved solar energy harvesting molecules to fabricating photomasks for microfluidic chip production. Their activities include a recent spin-off company to make a novel cell sorting chip.

Professor M. Suhail Zubairy

Prof. Zubairy's research interests include quantum optics and laser physics. He has been interested in quantum optical applications to quantum computing and quantum informatics. He has also been interested in quantum state measurement of the radiation field and sub-wavelength atom localization. His other interests include coherent atomic effects and quantum thermodynamics. He is the co-author of two books, one on Quantum Optics and the other on Quantum Computing Devices. Recently he published a book on Quantum Mechanics for Beginners.

Prof. Zubairy received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1978 working under the supervision of Prof. Emil Wolf. He held research and teaching appointments at the Optical Sciences Center of the University of Arizona and the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of New Mexico before joining the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan in 1984. He served as Professor of Electronics and the founding Chairman of the Department of Electronics at the Quaid-i-Azam University. In 2000 he joined Texas A and M University where he is presently a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the holder of the Munnerlyn-Heep Chair in Quantum Optics.

He has received many honors including the Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics, Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize, the Outstanding Physicist Award from the Organization of Islamic Countries, the Abdus Salam Prize in Physics, the International Khwarizmi Award from the President of Iran, the Orders of Hilal-e-Imtiaz and Sitara-e-Imtiaz from the President of Pakistan, and the George H. W. Bush Award for Excellence in International Research. He is an elected member of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

Professor Onofrio M. Maragò

Onofrio M. Maragò studied Physics in Pisa and Oxford. In 2002 he joined the CNR-IPCF, co-founding the Nano-Soft Lab. His research interests span from optical tweezers and optical manipulation, characterization of micro and nanoparticles, atoms, and Bose-Einstein condensates. More generally he has been working on the mechanical interaction of light and matter for applications in nanoscience, atomic physics, and soft matter. He co-authored the first textbook on optical tweezers (Jones, Maragò, Volpe, "Optical tweezers: Principles and applications", Cambridge University Press, 2015). Onofrio is an active senior member of the Optical Society of America, the European Physical Society, and Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti. He serves as Advisor for the OSA Student Chapter and Young Minds group in Messina and as a member of the Doctoral School in Physics of the University of Messina.

Professor Juergen Czarske

Juergen Czarske studied electrical engineering and physics and obtained his PhD degree and the Venia Legendi from Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany. From 1986 to 1991 he was funded with a scholarship of the company Siemens AG and worked in their research and development laboratories in Munich. From 1991 to 1996 he was employed as scientific member and assistant of the professor at the Leibniz University. From 1995 to 2004 he was as Postdoc responsible for the metrology development in the Laser Center Hannover (LZH e.V.). As visiting scholar he has conducted research in Japan (NTT) and USA (MIT, Bell Labs, Stanford, Virginia Tech, NASA, CalTech) from 1996 to 2001. Since 2004 he is C4 professor based at TU Dresden. Since January 2016, Prof. Czarske is Director of Institute of Circuits and Systems. His awards include the 1996 AHMT Measurement Technique Prize, a 2008 international Berthold Leibinger Innovation Prize, a 2014 Reinhart Koselleck Project of German Research Foundation and the 2019 Joseph Fraunhofer Award and Robert M. Burley Prize of The Optical Society (OSA), recognizing research accomplishments in optical engineering. Prof. Czarske is associate editor of Journal of the European Optical Society-Rapid Publications, elected member of Saxon Academy of Science in Leipzig, the Scientific Society for Laser Technology (WLT) and board member of German Society of Applied Optics (DGaO) and German Association of Laser Anemometry (GALA), as well as advisor of Student Chapter Dresden of SPIE. Prof. Czarske has conducted more than 800 talks and papers, especially about 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals, over 100 invited talks and he holds over 20 patents. Prof Czarske is Life Fellow of OSA and SPIE, Fellow of EOS and senior member of IEEE. Together with his employees and students he has formed the laboratory MST to a renowned institution for computational laser and ultrasound-based measurement systems. Over 60 scientific prizes and honors have been awarded to students and employees of the laboratory.

Prof. Czarske is the inaugural recipient of the Laser Instrumentation Award 2020 from the IEEE Photonics Society.

Professor Giancarlo Pedrini:

Professor Giancarlo Pedrini received his MS degree in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zurich) in 1982 and his PhD degree in Optical Sciences from the University of Neuchatel (Switzerland) in 1990. He joined the Institut für Technische Optik at the University of Stuttgart in 1991. His research areas include: digital holography, vibration analysis, shape measurement, non-destructive testing, measurement of the elastic parameters of biological samples, endoscopy, and phase retrieval.

Professor Artur Carnicer:

Artur Carnicer is a full professor of Optics at the University of Barcelona.

He is mainly interested in the development of techniques that requires the use of highly focused electromagnetic beams. Moreover, he has worked in a variety of topics in the field of information optics involving digital holography, optical security, and applications of integral imaging.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.