27 April 2011

UIUC’s Coleman receives SPIE Technology Achievement Award

The awards committee of SPIE (the international society for optics and photonics) has announced its 2011 SPIE Award recipients.

James J. Coleman, the Intel Alumni Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering & professor of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is has received the SPIE Technology Achievement award in recognition of his “seminal contributions to the methods, designs, and demonstrations of selectivity grown discrete and monolithically integrated compound semiconductor lasers and photonic devices”.

“I am very familiar with the large body of truly innovative and world-class research that professor Coleman has produced,” says Joe C. Campbell, Lucien Carr Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Virginia. “His work to demonstrate the use of strained-layer materials in a new class of semiconductor lasers for optical fiber pumps resulted in a worldwide expansion of fiber-optic systems owing to the use of fiber amplifiers,” he adds. “It is hard to fully describe the impact of these events on the communications technology, (and) professor Coleman’s role in these events was essential and pivotal.”

Coleman is a member of SPIE, and is a long-time contributor to several SPIE conferences. He served as a conference program committee member for the Active and Passive Optical Components for Communications conference for seven years.

The SPIE Technology Achievement award (which carries an honorarium of $2000) is awarded annually to recognize outstanding technical accomplishment in optics, electro-optics, photonic engineering, or imaging. Recipients should have contributed significantly to the advancement of one or more of these areas with specific demonstrations or applications.

SPIE presents several yearly awards that recognize outstanding individual and team technical accomplishments and meritorious service to the society.

Tags: Optical fiber pump lasers

Visit: http://sll.mntl.illinois.edu/coleman

Visit: http://spie.org/x3072.xml