Daily News Briefs

Randy Heyler, vice president of business development for Newport Corp., was appointed chairman of the Photonics Manufacturing Association Council (PMAC) 2003 steering committee. PMAC is part of the IPC-Association Connecting Electronics Industries, a Northbrook, Ill.-based trade association. . . . Several leaders in various photonics-related fields are among the 77 new members and nine foreign associates elected recently to The National Academy of Engineering.

New members include:

Rod C. Alferness, senior vice president, Optical Networking Research Div., Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, for his contributions to the development of electro-optic devices and circuits for light-wave transmission and switching systems;

Stephen R. Forrest, chair and professor of electrical engineering, Princeton University, for advances in optoelectronic devices, detectors for fiber optics and efficient organic LEDs for displays;

Robert Q. Fugate, senior scientist for atmospheric compensation, Directed Energy Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, for the experimental demonstration of laser beacons and the development of adaptive optical systems;

Karl G. Kempf, Intel Fellow and director, Decision Technologies, Intel Corp., for the development and implementation of control and decision systems that have improved the performance and cost-effectiveness of semiconductor manufacturing systems;

Debasis Mitra, vice president, mathematical sciences research, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, for contributions to the modeling, analysis and design of communication networks;

Thomas E. Romesser, vice president, technology development, TRW Space & Electronics Group, for pioneering contributions to high-power laser technology and isotope separation;

Henry Samueli, co-chairman and CTO, Broadcom Corp., for pioneering contributions to academic research and technology entrepreneurship in the broadband communications system-on-a-chip industry.

Stephen D. Senturia, professor of electrical engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for contributions to and leadership in research on microelectromechanical systems;

Alan M. Title, principal physicist, solar and astrophysics department, Lockheed Martin Corp., for pioneering development of elegant optical systems that enable precise space-based studies of the sun; and

Eli Yablonovitch, professor, electrical engineering department, University of California, Los Angeles, for introducing photonic bandgap engineering and applying semiconductor concepts to electromagnetic waves in artificial periodic structures.

New foreign associates include:

Shuji Nakamura, professor of materials, University of California, Santa Barbara, for contributions to optoelectronic engineering of gallium-nitride materials, culminating in the development of violet/blue lasers and light-emitting diodes; and

Evgeny P. Velikhov, president, Russian Research Center Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, for pioneering work in plasma physics, controlled nuclear fusion and gas lasers and for advancing international scientific cooperation.