NIST Fellow Jun Ye was honored Oct. 8 at the "Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery" symposium held to celebrate the 90th birthday of 1964 Nobel Laureate Charles Townes, co-inventor of the laser. Ye won first prize in the technological innovations category of the Young Scholars Competition, which honors promising and innovative physicists under the age of 40.
Ye, who leads a research group at JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado at Boulder, received the award for his paper "Optical Phase Control from 10-15 Seconds to 1 Second: Precision Measurement Meets Ultrafast Science." More than 900 people attended the symposium, held Oct. 6-8 at the University of California, Berkeley, with presentations by some 50 top physicists and researchers, including 16 Nobel Prize laureates. William D. Phillips, NIST 1997 Nobel Laureate in physics, was a co-organizer and panelist.
Information about the symposium is available at http://www.metanexus.net/archive/fqx/townes/. Information about the awards is available at www.foundationalquestions.net/townes/Amazing%20Light%20Closing.doc.