John Bowers earns 2012 John Tyndall Award

Washington, DC--The Optical Society (OSA) and the IEEE Photonics Society have awarded John Bowers, Fred Kavil Chair in Nanotechnology and director of the Institute for Energy Efficiency at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara), as the 2012 recipient of the John Tyndall Award.

The Tyndall Award recognizes Bowers’ international leadership in the development of novel optoelectronic devices, including groundbreaking research in hybrid-silicon lasers and photonic integrated circuits. This hybrid technology lowers the costs of photonic subsystems and allows optical communication technology to be applied to areas where it has been prohibitively expensive.

Bowers will be presented the award during the plenary session of the 2012 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC), taking place at the Los Angeles Convention Center on March 4–8, 2012.

Bowers, who is also a professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials at UC Santa Barbara, received his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University and worked for AT&T Bell Laboratories and Honeywell before joining UC Santa Barbara in 1987. Bowers has made numerous contributions to the field of optical communications—including more than 450 published journal articles, eight book chapters, 700 conference papers, and 52 patents—and has been recognized for this work throughout the course of his career. Bowers is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a fellow of IEEE, OSA, and the American Physical Society. He is a recipient of the OSA Holonyak Prize, the IEEE Photonics Society William Strifer Award, and the South Coast Business and Technology Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

The Tyndall Award is the highest recognition in the optical communications community and is co-sponsored by OSA and the IEEE Photonics Society. First presented in 1987, the Tyndall Award recognizes an individual who has made pioneering, highly significant, or continuing technical or leadership contributions to fiber-optic technology. Corning, Inc. endows the award, a glass sculpture that represents the concept of total internal reflection. The award is named for the 19th century scientist who was the first to demonstrate a phenomenon of internal reflection.

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