LAB SCIENTISTS NAMED FELLOWS OF OPTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
LIVERMORE, Calif. - Two scientists from Lawrence LivermoreNational Laboratory have been elected fellows of the Optical Societyof America.
Stephen Payne, associate program leader in the Lab's Laser Scienceand Technology organization, was recognized for "sustained pioneeringcontributions to the development of novel lamp and diode pumped solidstate laser materials."
Working with Lab colleagues, Payne developed more than a dozenlaser crystals and glasses, some commercially available, and otherscurrently in use on lasers at the Lab and at other institutions suchas the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics andSpace Administration.
A fifteen-year Lab employee, Payne received his Ph.D. in chemistryfrom Princeton. He has 80 referred journal publications, holds 11patents, received four R&D 100 Awards and recently received theExcellence In Fusion Engineering award from Fusion PowerAssociates.
"I am grateful to the wonderful mentors I've had here at LawrenceLivermore," Payne said. "Also to be credited are the many scientists,students and technicians I've collaborated with over the years. I'mhonored that such an eminent institution as the Optical Society ofAmerica is recognizing my work."
Mike Perry, associate program leader for the Lab's Short-PulseLasers, Applications and Technology Program, was recognized for"pioneering contributions to the development and use of high peakpower, ultrashort-pulse lasers" in high-intensity physics research.Areas of investigation included the fast ignitor concept for inertialconfinement fusion, and materials processing applications inindustrial machining and healthcare. Perry was also key in the Lab'sdevelopment of large scale diffractive optics for large areadiffraction gratings used to manipulate laser light.
Perry has been at the Laboratory for 17 years, starting with hisdoctoral work for the University of California, Berkeley in nuclearengineering/quantum electronics. Perry has authored more than 100scientific papers on laser technology, atomic and plasma physics,materials processing, diffractive and nonlinear optics, and the useof lasers in medicine. He holds patents areas such as inertialconfinement fusion, multilayer dielectric diffraction gratings andultrashort pulse laser machining.
"I appreciate the great honor this Fellowship bestows," Perrysaid, "but I think the honor also goes to the Laboratory and to allof the people who were members of the research teams I worked with.This kind of work is always a team effort."
The OSA is an international network of more than 12,000 opticalscientists, engineers, and technicians in some 50 countries.Fellowship is granted members who have served with distinction in theadvancement of optics, and is limited to 10 percent of the totalSociety membership.
Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is anational security laboratory, with a mission to ensure nationalsecurity and apply science and technology to the important issues ofour time. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is managed by theUniversity of California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
