Hillary Clinton to Speak at OSA Meeting

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will speak at Frontiers in Optics 2004, the 88th annual meeting of the Optical Society of America (OSA), to be held Oct. 10-14 in Rochester, N.Y.

The conference will also feature a panel discussion by three Nobel Laureates: Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, a physics professor at the College de France and Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris; and William Phillips, a researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in Gaithersburg, Md. They shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics for their development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

Topics of abstracts to be presented at the scientific program will include an investigation into recent claims that early Renaissance masters used optical projections while painting, techniques based on light that can help determine malignant from nonmalignant breast cancer, using optics-based technology to identify cancer cells and high-risk arterial blocking, advances in holographic television and laser-guided adaptive optics for astronomy to improve ground-based telescopes.

"The science of optics affects ordinary people in ways they may not recognize," OSA said. "The study of optics has ever-important applications for space exploration, detection of disease and homeland security. The development of the laser has revolutionized everything from watching television to correcting vision."

OSA was founded in Rochester, where many of the field’s most prolific optics researchers live and work. The region is home to Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and Corning Inc. The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester will mark its 75th anniversary that week.

For more information, visit: www.frontiersinoptics.org