David Payne, director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton in Highfield, Southampton, England, will receive the IEEE 2007 Photonics Award, recognizing his contributions to the development and commercialization of optical fiber-based technologies for communications, sensors and high-power applications. Sponsored by IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics (LEOS), the award recognizes outstanding achievements in photonics. It will be presented March 27 during OFC/NFOEC 2007, being held March 25-29 in Ahaheim, Calif. Payne, who has had a four-decade photonics career in photonics, is a fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the IEEE and OSA. His achievements include fiber design, optical amplifiers, specialty fibers and high-power lasers and amplifiers. He made early contributions to fiber manufacturing and doping materials, was the first to use phosphorous as a core dopant that gave numerous processing advantages, invented and developed fibers with unique birefringence properties and created the erbium-doped fiber amplifier that revolutionized optical fiber communications. He and his team have designed some of the highest-power fiber lasers in the world and generated numerous fiber components in the sensor arena involving novel Bragg grating materials and devices that have significantly improved functionality, the IEEE said. He also launched York Technology Ltd. -- which generated a number of companies in the Southampton area, including Fibercore and SENSA -- and SPI Lasers plc.