Quantum Optics Professor Ian Walmsley Chosen as Future President of OSA

Ian Walmsley of Oxford University in England has been elected to serve as president of The Optical Society (OSA) in 2018.

The election means a four-year commitment for Walmsley, who will first serve as vice president in 2016, president-elect in 2017 and past president in 2019.

"Ian is a recognized leader in the field of optics," said OSA CEO Elizabeth Rogan. "He understands the critical value that a professional society like OSA gives to both current and future generation of innovators."

Election results were announced at Frontiers in Optics, OSA's annual meeting.

Three directors at large were also chosen for three-year terms starting Jan. 1: professor Michal Lipson of Columbia University; Franz Kärtner, a group leader at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science and the University of Hamburg in Germany; and Turan Erdogan, site leader at Melles Griot in Rochester, N.Y.

Walmsley is the Hooke professor of experimental physics and pro-vice chancellor for research and innovation at Oxford. He leads a research group in the areas of quantum and ultrafast optics, and is director of the Networked Quantum Information Technologies Hub of the U.K. National Quantum Technologies Program.

His research efforts have been directed toward quantum phenomena on ultrafast timescales, including the generation of nonclassical radiation and its application in quantum technologies, including sensing, communications and simulation, manipulation of matter using closed loop methods, and the development of methods for the measurement of ultrafast optical waveforms.

He has published more than 240 research articles and review papers and been granted five patents. In 1999, he received the Goergen Award for Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Rochester, as well as the Rochester Undergraduate Optical Society Teaching Award in 1996, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science Teaching Award in 1995.

Walmsley is an OSA fellow and has been an active volunteer with the organization for more than two decades, holding a variety of key leadership positions. Recently he chaired the committee that established OSA's flagship journal, Optica, in 2014. He has also chaired global conferences, including several OSA topical meetings.

"The Optical Society has provided me with a professional home for more than two decades, from my earliest years as a graduate student to the present," Walmsley said. "I hope to contribute to OSA's continuing impact on the field and profession through its role as the go-to place for optics for students, researchers, professional scientists and engineers, industrialists, entrepreneurs and policy-makers."