ORC Professor elected as OSA fellow

ORC Professor Johan Nilsson has been elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) by the society’s Board of Directors at a meeting in San Jose, California. He was recognised for his seminal contributions to the development and demonstration of high power fibre lasers. His election will be confirmed at the awards ceremony of the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in May 2010 in San Jose.

Professor Nilsson’s extensive research in the field of optics has led to over 300 scientific publications, primarily on erbium-doped fibre amplifiers (EDFAs) and high power fibre lasers, including the first near-diffraction-limited fibre laser at over 1 kW of output power. His career started at Samsung Electronics in Korea, where he developed EDFAs for WDM and CATV applications. Also since joining the ORC in 1997, he has maintained an industrial focus in his research, and is a co-founder of, and consultant to, Southampton Photonics.

The OSA was founded to increase and diffuse knowledge of optics, pure and applied, and to promote the interests of and collaboration between those involved in the field; it contains over 14,000 members, from more than 81 countries. The class of Fellow is reserved for OSA members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics, and can only be nominated for this transfer by current OSA Fellows.

Professor Nilsson comments: “To be elected Fellow of the OSA is a great honour. I am delighted that ORC’s industry-focussed research is recognised in this way by a world-leading society. I would like to thank my colleagues and sponsors who have contributed so much to my research here.â€?