SPIE is an international not-for-profit professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It organizes technical conferences, trade exhibitions, and continuing education programs for researchers and developers in the light-based fields of physics, including: optics, photonics, and imaging engineering. The society publishes peer-reviewed scientific journals, conference proceedings, monographs, tutorial texts, field guides, and reference volumes in print and online. SPIE is especially well-known for Photonics West, one of the laser and photonics industry's largest combined conferences and tradeshows which is held annually in San Francisco. SPIE also participates as partners in leading educational initiatives, and in 2020, for example, provided more than $5.8 million in support of optics education and outreach programs around the world.
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.
The John Tyndall Award is given to the "individual who has made pioneering, highly significant, or continuing technical or leadership contributions to fiber optics technology". The award is named after John Tyndall (1820-1893), who demonstrated for the first time internal reflection.
The University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences, considered the largest institute for optics education in the United States, is dedicated to research and education in optics with an emphasis on optical engineering. The college offers more than 90 courses in optical sciences, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Optical Sciences and Engineering, Masters and Doctoral degree programs in Optical Sciences, as well as a dual master's degree in Optical Sciences and Business Administration. The college also offers comprehensive distance learning courses leading to a Professional Graduate Certificate or a master's degree and markets non-credit short courses on DVD to optics professionals.
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.
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.
Susan Nicole Houde-Walter is an academic and technical executive in the field of optics. She was professor of optics at the University of Rochester from 1987-2005. She used to run LaserMaxDefense, a manufacturer of laser equipment for military and law enforcement. She served as president of the Optical Society in 2005 and has travelled extensively with the US military. Dr. Houde-Walter served as director of the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology. from 2022 to 2023.
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.
Michael S. Feld was an American physicist, who was best known for his work on quantum optics, and medical applications of lasers.
Demetri Psaltis is a Greek-American electrical engineer who was the Dean of the School of Engineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne from 2007 to 2017. Since 2024 he is a professor emeritus at EPFL. He is one of the founders of the term and the field of optofluidics. He is also well known for his past work in holography, especially with regards to optical computing, holographic data storage, and neural networks. He is an author of over 1100 publications, contributed more than 20 book chapters, invented more than 50 patents, and currently has a h-index of 104.
James Clair Wyant was a professor at the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona where he was Director (1999–2005) and Dean (2005–2012). He received a B.S. in physics from Case Western Reserve University and M.S. and Ph.D. in optics from the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester.
James Power Gordon was an American physicist known for his work in the fields of optics and quantum electronics. His contributions include the design, analysis and construction of the first maser in 1954 as a doctoral student at Columbia University under the supervision of C. H. Townes, development of the quantal equivalent of Shannon's information capacity formula in 1962, development of the theory for the diffusion of atoms in an optical trap in 1980, and the discovery of what is now known as the Gordon-Haus effect in soliton transmission, together with H. A. Haus in 1986. Gordon was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.
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.
The William F. Meggers Award has been awarded annually since 1970 by the Optical Society for outstanding contributions to spectroscopy. It was established to honor William Frederick Meggers and his contributions to the fields of spectroscopy and metrology.
Govind P. Agrawal is an Indian American physicist and a fellow of Optica, Life Fellow of the IEEE, and Distinguished Fellow of the Optical Society of India. He is the recipient of James C. Wyant Professorship of Optics at the Institute of Optics and a professor of physics at the University of Rochester. He is also a Distinguished scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) in the University of Rochester. Agrawal has authored and co-authored several highly cited books in the fields of non-linear fiber optics, optical communications, and semiconductor lasers.
Patricia R. Wakeling (1923–2016) was the recipient of the Optical Society of America (OSA) Stephen D. FantoneDistinguished Service Award in 1990 and Managing Editor of the scientific journal Applied Optics for three decades. Wakefield was integral in the launch of OSA's first two journals.
Stefan Andersson-Engels is a Swedish biophysicist specializing in the field of biophotonics. He is professor at University College Cork and the deputy director of the Irish Photonics Integration Center (IPIC) within the Science Foundation Ireland. Before joining University College Cork, he was Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Lund University. He has co-founded 3 biophotonics companies Spectracure, Lumito, BioPixS. He also co-founded biannual biophotonics summer school.
Nathalie Picqué is a French physicist working at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in the field Frequency Combs, where she studies ultra-high resolution spectroscopy using ultrashort pulses of light combined with Fourier-transform spectroscopy to reveal the fine chemistry of samples, in particular in the mid-infrared, demonstrating resolving power in excess of 1,000,000,000,000.
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.
Vassilia Zorba is a Greek-American plasma physicist, group leader and professor at Berkeley Lab. Her research focuses on the development of ultrafast laser plasma spectroscopies. She specialises in femtosecond laser-matter interactions. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Optica.
