OSA Elects Philip Russell as 2013 Vice President

Date Announced: 16 Oct 2012

Russell to Serve as OSA President in 2015; Three directors at large also elected.

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 16—The Optical Society (OSA) is pleased to announce that its members have elected Philip Russell of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany as its 2013 vice president. Three directors at large were also chosen during this year's election: Susana Marcos of Instituto de Optica, CSIC, in Spain, Lynn E. Nelson of AT&T Labs in Middletown, N.J., and Gregory J. Quarles of B.E. Meyers and Co., Inc. in Redmond, Wash.

By accepting the vice presidency, Russell makes a four-year commitment to OSA's Board of Directors. As vice president, he will automatically become president-elect in 2014 and then the society's president in 2015, followed by a one-year term as past president.

Russell served on the OSA Board of Directors from 2007 to 2009, where he also served on the Finance Committee. He is also a past member of OSA’s Publications Long-Term Planning Group and Tellers Committee. 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 meeting and Ultrafast Phenomena meeting. In 2001, Russell became a Fellow of OSA. He received OSA’s Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M Burley Prize in 2000 “for his invention of the photonic crystal fiber.”

"Phil’s leadership at OSA comes at a time when optics and photonics has an essential role in helping solve key challenges in energy, manufacturing, and telecom,” said OSA CEO Elizabeth Rogan. “His wide-ranging experience with OSA activities—from journals to meetings to the Board—along with his well-respected research achievements, will serve the society well."

Russell is a 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. He obtained his doctorate in 1979 at the University of Oxford, working on volume holography. In 1978, he was elected to a Hayward Junior Research Fellowship at Oriel College Oxford, a position he held until 1981, when he moved to the Technischen Universität Hamburg-Harburg as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.

He then held positions at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. and at UK’s Southampton University. He joined the University of Bath in 1996 as full professor, creating and building up a group that is now the Centre for Photonics & Photonic Materials. Russell’s research interests include photonic crystals, photonic crystal fiber, optical fiber devices, nonlinear optics, lasers and amplifiers. His work on photonics crystal fibers led, in 2001, to the formation of BlazePhotonics Ltd., whose aim was the commercial exploitation of the technology.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Russell has received numerous awards for his work, including the UK Institute of Physics’ Applied Optics Division Prize and Thomas Young Prize, the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, and the Körber Prize for European Science.

Along with Russell, the new directors at large, Marcos, Nelson, and Quarles, will begin their terms on Jan. 1, 2013. They will hold their positions for three years.

"OSA is pleased to welcome Susana, Lynn and Greg to the Board," said Rogan. "These three talented members will bring a distinct range of educational, technical, and corporate business experiences and skills to the OSA Board."

Source: OSA

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