LIGHT2015 Young Women in Photonics and Young Entrepreneur in Photonics Awards Winners Announced
The LIGHT2015 project – coordinated by the European Physical Society – is pleased to announce the LIGHT2015 Award winners. The Young Women in Photonics Award was created to recognise young female scientists who have made outstanding contributions to photonics. The 2015 award in the Fundamental category goes to Na Liu (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems) and to Nathalie Vermeulen (Photonics Team (B-PHOT), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)) in the Applied/Engineering category. The winner of the Young Photonics Entrepreneur Award is Garret D. Cole (Crystalline Mirror Solutions LLC& GmbH). The awards ceremony was held during the World of Photonics Congress in Munich, Germany, on Wednesday 24 June.
LIGHT2015 Young Women in Photonics Award: Fundamental Category
Dr. Na Liu is the laureate of the LIGHT2015 Young Women in Photonics Award in the Fundamental Category for “her seminal contribution to nanophotonics and nanoplasmonics. “
Na Liu (age 36) completed her doctorate at the University of Stuttgart. She worked as a postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley and later as a visiting professor at Rice University. She is a group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and also a full professor at the University of Heidelberg.
LIGHT2015 Young Women in Photonics Award: Applied/Engineering category
Dr. Nathalie Vermeulen is the laureate of the LIGHT2015 Young Women in Photonics Award: in the Applied/Engineering category for “introducing a disruptive model for the nonlinear process of Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering and employed it to conceptualise a novel cooling technique for Raman lasers.”
Nathalie Vermeulen (aged 33) is a professor in the Brussels Photonics Team at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. Her research is focused on generating light with multiple wavelengths in optical chips. In 2013 she obtained a prestigious European ERC Starting Grant, and she also became coordinator of a European FET project.
LIGHT2015 Young Entrepreneur in Photonics Award
Dr. Garret D. Cole is the laureate of the LIGHT2015 Young Entrepreneur in Photonics award for “the development of a game-changing low-noise optical coating process that enables the integration of single-crystal semiconductor films onto arbitrary optical substrates, and for successful entrepreneurship through subsequently founding the high-tech start-up company Crystalline Mirror Solutions GmbH.”
Garrett Cole (aged 36), Co-Founder of Crystalline Mirror Solutions (CMS), obtained his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Santa Barbara in 2005. Leveraging his wide-ranging expertise in micromechanically-tuneable surface-emitting lasers, cavity opto-mechanical systems, and advanced micro-fabrication techniques, Dr. Cole co-founded CMS along with Prof. Markus Aspelmeyer in February 2012.
You can find more information about the LIGHT2015 Awards winners here.
