OSA Honors Achievements In Optical Engineering
Washington DC, December 11, 2003. Four leaders in the field of optical engineering were given the prestigious 2003 Engineering Excellence Awards by The Optical Society of America (OSA). OSA made the presentations at its annual meeting, "Frontiers in Optics," in Tucson, Arizona in October 2003. The winners are Paul R. Dumas, QED Technologies; Alan H. Gnauck, Bell Laboratories; Mark E. Lowry, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and L. Ramdas Ram-Mohan, Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
"This year's winners contributed to the advancement of optical engineering and to the mentoring of optical engineers," said Edward Watson, US Air Force, chair, Engineering Excellence Award Selection Committee. "From lightwave systems to photonic instrumentation, the achievements of the 2003 honorees have opened new doors for research and innovation."
Each recipient of the Engineering Excellence Award worked to advance the field and has produced significant results:
Paul R. Dumas, QED Technologies, received the honor for significant contributions to the development, automation, and commercialization of Magnetorheological Finishing (MRF). Dumas is one of the founding employees of QED Technologies, and is currently the Applications Engineering Manager. Dumas became involved with the MRF research program at the Center for Optics Manufacturing (COM) in 1994,writing software to control the prototype MRF machines. In 1997, he helped start up QED and commercialize the MRF process.
Alan H. Gnauck, Bell Laboratories, was recognized for numerous achievements in the development of high-speed, ultra-high-capacity lightwave systems including the first Terabit/s system demonstration. Gnauck is a distinguished member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. He is conducting research on high-capacity lightwave communications systems.
Mark E. Lowry, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL), won the award for leadership in the development of innovative photonic instrumentation and in the development of revolutionary network architectures including the use of tunable DWDM techniques in optical metro networking systems. Lowry currently works for LLNL focusing on the application of photonics technology to national security.
L. Ramdas Ram-Mohan, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, was acknowledged fort he development of advanced algorithms to optimize design methods for mid-IR quantum well lasers, for advancing the paradigm of wave function engineering, and for mentoring students in optoelectronics. Ram-Mohan currently works at Worcester Polytechnic Institute where he serves as the Professor of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering. In addition, Ram-Mohan is the President of Quantum Semiconductor Algorithms, where he has developed software for the successful design of quantum well near-IR, mid-IR, and FIR lasers.
OSA presents the Engineering Excellence Awards annually to honor achievements in this highly specialized field. These awards highlight technical achievements in optical engineering and are bestowed upon those individuals who have made significant contributions and advancements. Nominations are solicited in products, engineering publication, process, software, patents, engineering education, contribution to society, engineering management and furthering public appreciation of optical engineering.
Additional information is available at www.osa.org .
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