Photonic Crystal Fiber Inventor Named OSA VP

Photonic crystal fiber inventor Philip Russell was elected as The Optical Society’s (OSA) 2013 vice president, the organization announced Tuesday at Frontiers in Optics 2012. Three directors at large were also chosen by OSA members.

Russell is founding director of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, and holds the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Chair in Experimental Physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Russell’s research interests include photonic crystals, photonic crystal fiber, optical fiber devices, nonlinear optics, lasers and amplifiers.

He is the founding chair of the OSA Topical Meeting on Bragg Gratings, Photosensitivity and Poling in Glass Waveguides, and has also served on the program committees for OSA’s Integrated Photonics Research, Silicon and Nanophotonics and Ultrafast Phenomena meetings.

For inventing photonic crystal fiber, Russell received OSA’s Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M Burley Prize in 2000. That work also led to the formation of BlazePhotonics Ltd. the next year to commercialize the technology.

By accepting the vice presidency, Russell automatically will become president-elect in 2014 and president in 2015, followed by a one-year term as past president. He has served as an OSA fellow since 2001.

OSA also announced the appointment of three directors at large: Susana Marcos of Instituto de Optica, CSIC, Spain; Lynn E. Nelson of AT&T Labs, Middletown, N.J.; and Gregory J. Quarles of B.E. Meyers and Co. Inc., Redmond, Wash.

Along with Russell, the new directors will begin their terms on Jan. 1, 2013. They will hold their positions for three years.

For more information, visit: www.osa.org