Clara Jody Saraceno (born 1983) is a laser scientist whose research involves the development of ultrafast lasers, a technology whose applications include ultrafast laser spectroscopy, and imaging biological processes at the molecular scale. [1] Born in Argentina and educated in France and Switzerland, [2] she works in Germany as a professor in the Faculty for Electrical Engineering of Ruhr University Bochum, where she holds the Chair of Photonics and Ultrafast Laser Science. [3]
Saraceno was born in 1983 in Buenos Aires, Argentine. [2] [4] She studied optics and photonics at the Institut d'optique Graduate School in France, part of Paris-Saclay University, after which she worked in the US for Coherent, Inc. from 2007 to 2008. Returning to graduate study at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, she completed a PhD in 2012, [2] under the supervision of physicist Ursula Keller. [5]
After postdoctoral research at ETH Zurich and the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, she joined Ruhr University Bochum in Germany as an associate professor in 2016. [4]
Saraceno's doctoral thesis won the 2013 Quantum Electronics and Optics Division Thesis Prize of the European Physical Society. She was a 2016 recipient of the Sofia Kovalevskaya Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. [2]
She became an Optica Ambassador in 2019, [4] and was named as a 2022 Optica Fellow, "for seminal contributions to ultrafast science and technology, as well as outstanding service to the optics community". [6]
Gérard Albert Mourou is a French scientist and pioneer in the field of electrical engineering and lasers. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, along with Donna Strickland, for the invention of chirped pulse amplification, a technique later used to create ultrashort-pulse, very high-intensity (petawatt) laser pulses.
Xi-Cheng Zhang is a Chinese-born American physicist, currently serving as the Parker Givens Chair of Optics at the University of Rochester, and the director of the Institute of Optics. He is also the Chairman of the Board and President of Zomega Terahertz Corporation.
Michal Lipson is an American physicist known for her work on silicon photonics. A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2019, Lipson was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow for contributions to silicon photonics especially towards enabling GHz silicon active devices. Until 2014, she was the Given Foundation Professor of Engineering at Cornell University in the school of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience at Cornell. She is now the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University. In 2009 she co-founded the company PicoLuz, which develops and commercializes silicon nanophotonics technologies. In 2019, she co-founded Voyant Photonics, which develops next generation lidar technology based on silicon photonics. In 2020 Lipson was elected the 2021 vice president of Optica, and serves as the Optica president in 2023.
Eric Van Stryland was president of the Optical Society of America in 2005.
Anthony Michael Johnson is an American experimental physicist, a professor of physics, and a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He is the Director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Photonics Research (CASPR), also situated on campus at UMBC. Since his election to the 2002 term as president of the Optical Society, formerly the Optical Society of America, Johnson has the distinction of being the first and only African-American president to date. Johnson's research interests include the ultrafast photophysics and nonlinear optical properties of bulk, nanostructured, and quantum well semiconductor structures, ultrashort pulse propagation in fibers and high-speed lightwave systems. His research has helped to better understand processes that occur in ultrafast time frames of 1 quadrillionth of a second. Ultrashort pulses of light have been used to address technical and logistical challenges in medicine, telecommunications, homeland security, and have many other applications that enhance contemporary life.
Ann Catrina Coleman FIEEE FOSA is a Scottish electrical engineer and professor at the University of Texas at Dallas specialising in semiconductor lasers.
Constance J. Chang-Hasnain is chairperson and founder of Berxel Photonics Co. Ltd. and Whinnery Professor Emerita of the University of California, Berkeley. She was President of Optica in 2021.
Martin Aeschlimann is a Swiss physicist and professor in the physics department of the University of Kaiserslautern. Since 2008 he is the spokesman of the State Research Center for Optics and Material Sciences (OPTIMAS).
Ursula Keller is a Swiss physicist. She has been a physics professor at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland since 2003 with a speciality in ultra-fast laser technology, an inventor and the winner of the 2018 European Inventor Award by the European Patent Office.
(James) Roy Taylor is Professor of Ultrafast Physics and Technology at Imperial College London.
James J. Coleman is an electrical engineer who worked at Bell Labs, Rockwell International, and the University of Illinois, Urbana. He is best known for his work on semiconductor lasers, materials and devices including strained-layer indium gallium arsenide lasers and selective area epitaxy. Coleman is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.
Donna Theo Strickland is a Canadian optical physicist and pioneer in the field of pulsed lasers. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, together with Gérard Mourou, for the practical implementation of chirped pulse amplification. She is a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada.
Jelena Vučković is a Serbian-born American professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and a courtesy faculty member in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University. Vučković leads the Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics (NQP) Lab, and is a faculty member of the Ginzton Lab, PULSE Institute, SIMES Institute, and Bio-X at Stanford. She was the inaugural director of the Q-FARM initiative. She is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of The Optical Society, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Andrew Marc Weiner OSA NAE NAI is an American electrical engineer, educator and researcher known for contributions to the fields of ultrafast optics and optical signal processing. He is the Scifres Family Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University.
Peter J. Delfyett Jr is an American engineer and Pegasus Professor and Trustee Chair Professor of Optics, ECE & Physics at the University of Central Florida College of Optics and Photonics.
Herbert Graves Winful is a Ghanaian-American engineering professor, whose honours include in 2020 the Quantum Electronics Award. He is the Joseph E. and Anne P. Rowe Professor of Electrical Engineering, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan.
Niels Quack is a Swiss and German engineer specialized in optical micro engineering. He is a SNSF professor at EPFL and director of the Photonic Micro- and Nanosystems Laboratory at its school of engineering.
Carmen S. Menoni is an Argentine-American physicist who is the University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University. Her research considers oxide materials for interference coatings and spectrometry imaging. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, American Physical Society, The Optical Society and SPIE. Menoni served as the President of the IEEE Photonics Society from 2020 to 2021.
Alexander Luis Gaeta is an American physicist and the David M. Rickey Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University. He is known for his work on quantum and nonlinear photonics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Optica, and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Francesca Calegari is an Italian physicist who is lead of the Attosecond Science division at the Center for Free Electron Laser Science at DESY. She is a professor at the University of Hamburg. Calegari is interested in the electron dynamics of complex systems. She was awarded the International Commission of Optics (ICO) Prize and the Ernst Abbe Medal.