Eli Yablonovitch is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John, founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987. He and his team were the first to create a 3-dimensional structure that exhibited a full photonic bandgap, which has been named Yablonovite. In addition to pioneering photonic crystals, he was the first to recognize that a strained quantum-well laser has a significantly reduced threshold current compared to its unstrained counterpart. This is now employed in the majority of semiconductor lasers fabricated throughout the world. His seminal paper reporting inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic crystals is among the most highly cited papers in physics and engineering.
Naomi J. Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry, and physics at Rice University. She is also the founding director of Rice University Laboratory for Nanophotonics, and the Smalley-Curl Institute. She invented the first nanoparticle with tunable plasmonic resonances, which are controlled by their shape and structure, and has won numerous awards for her pioneering work in the field of nanophotonics and plasmonics. She was also part of a team that developed the first dark pulse soliton in 1987 while working for IBM.
Phaedon Avouris is a Greek chemical physicist and materials scientist. He is an IBM Fellow and was formerly the group leader for Nanometer Scale Science and Technology at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York.
Federico Capasso is an applied physicist and is one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University.
Philip St. John Russell, FRS, is Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. His area of research covers "photonics and new materials", in particular the examination of new optical materials, especially of photonic crystal fibres, and more generally the field of nano- and micro-structured photonic materials.
The Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids is a prize that has been awarded every second year by the American Physical Society since 1980. The recipient is chosen for "outstanding optical research that leads to breakthroughs in the condensed matter sciences.". The prize is named after Frank Isakson, and as of 2007 it is valued at $5,000.
Vladimir (Vlad) M. Shalaev is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Scientific Director for Nanophotonics at Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University.
Robert Louis Byer is a physicist. He was president of the Optical Society of America in 1994 and of the American Physical Society in 2012.
Andrea Alù is an Italian American scientist and engineer, currently Einstein Professor of Physics at The City University of New York Graduate Center. He is known for his contributions to the fields of optics, photonics, plasmonics, and acoustics, most notably in the context of metamaterials and metasurfaces. He has co-authored over 650 journal papers and 35 book chapters, and he holds 11 U.S. patents.
Chih-Kung Lee is a Taiwanese mechanical engineer. He received his B.S. degree in civil engineering from National Taiwan University and then obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, majoring in theoretical & applied mechanics, with a minor in physics. He is known as the inventor of modal sensors and actuators. In the past, he has been an advisor to the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Economic Affairs and various other governmental agencies, as well as the director general of engineering & applied sciences at Taiwan's National Science Council (NSC). Currently, he is the chairman of Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Institute for Information Industry (III). He is also a distinguished professor of the Graduate Institute of Electronics Engineering, the Institute of Applied Mechanics (IAM) and the Dept. of Engineering Science & Ocean Engineering at National Taiwan University.
John Arthur Woollam is an American educator, research physicist, electrical engineer, and George Holmes Distinguished Professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in Lincoln, Nebraska. He is also a successful entrepreneur who in 1987 founded the J.A. Woollam Company, an ellipsometry company based in Lincoln, Nebraska, and a world leader in the research, development, and commercialization of ellipsometry instruments. Woollam is also a known as a philanthropist and nature conservationist.
Nikolay Zheludev is a British scientist specializing in nanophotonics, metamaterials, nanotechnology, electrodynamics, and nonlinear optics. Nikolay Zheludev is one of the founding members of the closely interlinked fields of metamaterials and nanophotonics that emerged at the dawn of the 21st century on the crossroads of optics and nanotechnology. Nikolay's work focus on developing new concepts in which nanoscale structuring of matter enhance and radically change its optical properties.
David A. B. Miller is the W. M. Keck Foundation Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he is also a professor of Applied Physics by courtesy. His research interests include the use of optics in switching, interconnection, communications, computing, and sensing systems, physics and applications of quantum well optics and optoelectronics, and fundamental features and limits for optics and nanophotonics in communications and information processing.
Albert Stolow is a Canadian physicist. He is the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Photonics, full professor of chemistry & biomolecular sciences and of physics, and a member of the Ottawa Institute for Systems Biology at the University of Ottawa. He is the founder and an ongoing member of the Molecular Photonics Group at the National Research Council of Canada. He is adjunct professor of Chemistry and of Physics at Queen's University in Kingston, and a Graduate Faculty Scholar in the department of physics, University of Central Florida and a Fellow of the Max-Planck-uOttawa Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics. In 2008, he was elected a Fellow in the American Physical Society, nominated by its Division of Chemical Physics in 2008, for contributions to ultrafast laser science as applied to molecular physics, including time-resolved studies of non-adiabatic dynamics in excited molecules, non-perturbative quantum control of molecular dynamics, and dynamics of polyatomic molecules in strong laser fields. In 2008, Stolow won the Keith Laidler Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, for a distinguished contribution to the field of physical chemistry, recognizing early career achievement. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America for the application of ultrafast optical techniques to molecular dynamics and control, in particular, studies of molecules in strong laser fields and the development of new methods of optical quantum control. In 2013, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (Canada). In 2017, Stolow was awarded the Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics of the American Physical Society for the development of methods for probing and controlling ultrafast dynamics in polyatomic molecules, including time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and imaging, strong field molecular ionization, and dynamic Stark quantum control. In 2018, Stolow was awarded the John C. Polanyi Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry “for excellence by a scientist carrying out research in Canada in physical, theoretical or computational chemistry or chemical physics”. In 2020, he became Chair of the Division of Chemical Physics of the American Physical Society. His group's research interests include ultrafast molecular dynamics and quantum control, time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and imaging, strong field & attosecond physics of polyatomic molecules, and coherent non-linear optical microscopy of live cells/tissues, materials and geological samples. In 2020, Stolow launched a major new high power ultrafast laser facility at the University of Ottawa producing high energy, phase-controlled few-cycle pulses of 2 micron wavelength at 10 kHz repetition rate. These are used for High Harmonic Generation to produce bright ultrafast Soft X-ray pulses for a new Ultrafast Xray Science Laboratory.
Mark J. Cardillo is an American chemist currently at The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
John D. Joannopoulos is an American physicist, focused in condensed matter theory. He is currently the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an Elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), an Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S), and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and American Physical Society (APS).
Manijeh Razeghi is an Iranian-American scientist in the fields of semiconductors and optoelectronic devices. She is a pioneer in modern epitaxial techniques for semiconductors such as low pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), vapor phase epitaxy (VPE), molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), GasMBE, and MOMBE. These techniques have enabled the development of semiconductor devices and quantum structures with higher composition consistency and reliability, leading to major advancement in InP and GaAs based quantum photonics and electronic devices, which were at the core of the late 20th century optical fiber telecommunications and early information technology.
Peter J. Nordlander is a Swedish physicist.
Mathias Michael Schubert is a German physicist, J. A. Woollam Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and member of the Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience. He is a specialist in spectroscopic ellipsometry and has contributed to the development of blue and white LED, fast processors and efficient biological and chemical sensors. He is also visiting professor at Linkoping University and Associate Editor of the journal Applied Physics Letters.
John Ballato is an American materials scientist, entrepreneur, and academic. He holds the J. E. Sirrine Endowed Chair of Optical Fiber and is a professor of materials science and engineering, electrical and computer engineering, as well as physics and astronomy at Clemson University. He has received many international recognitions for his research on optical and optoelectronic materials, particularly as relates to optical fiber.
