OSA Annual MeetingNew Focus Awards to honor optics students

Oct. 11, 2001
Tuesday, October 16, 2001, eight graduate student finalists nominated by their professors for making outstanding international contributions to the optics field, will personally present their research papers as they compete for three grand prizes of $10,000 and five top prizes of $2500.

The Optical Society of America (OSA) has announced that, in

spite of recent international events, the 4th annual New Focus Student Awards ceremony will take place as previously planned on Tuesday, October 16, 2001, as an integral highlight of the Society's 2001 Annual Meeting at the Long Beach, CA, Convention Center. During the event, eight graduate student finalists nominated by their professors for making outstanding international contributions to the optics field, will personally present their research papers as they compete for three grand prizes of $10,000 and five top prizes of $2500. The ceremony is described as a high-energy forum where cutting-edge new ideas in photonics, laser and electro-optics are unveiled and put to test; with prizes awarded on the basis of the importance of the research work.

The OSA New Focus Student Awards were established in 1997 with the support of Milton Chang and New Focus Incorporated, to encourage research excellence, presentation prowess, and leadership in the optics community. This year's finalists are Randy Bartels, Univ. of Colorado Boulder, USA, Mehmet Bayindir, Bilkent Univ., Turkey, Wanli Chi, Univ. of Rochester, Irina Novikova, Texas A&M Univ., USA, Dimitri Pappas, Univ. of Florida, USA, Jay Sharping, Northwestern Univ., USA, Yuri Shpolyanskiy, St. Petersburg State Inst. of Fine Mechanics & Optics, Russia, Alexey Ukrainsky, St. Petersburg State Inst. of Fine Mechanics & Optics, Russia.

The three-day meeting will also feature social and networking opportunities, symposia and poster sessions featuring presentations from all seven OSA Divisions, and an exhibit hall showcasing more than 60 exhibitors.

The plenary session will feature Neal Lane, former director of the National Science Foundation and White House Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Policy (President's Science Advisor). He will speak on Entrepreneurship in Science Policy.

Also in the plenary session, Milton Chang, New Focus cofounder and retired chairman of the New Focus board and managing director of Incubic, will speak on Confessions and Lessons Learned. Chang has incubated more than a dozen companies without a single failure.

Finally, Jack M. Gill, general partner of the Vanguard Venture Partners, senior advisor to the Director of CIMIT, and Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, will wrap up the Plenary session and speak on Lasers and Communications, The Holy Grail. Gill was named a 1999 winner of the Horatio Alger Award for Distinguished Americans.

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