Paul Corkum, Ph. D.
Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory
National Research Council and University of Ottawa, Canada
Biography:
Paul Corkum received his Ph. D. degree from Lehigh University in 1972. He joined NRC as a pdf in 1973 switching from theory to experiment. Dr. Corkum is best known for introducing many of the concepts for how atoms and molecules interact with intense light pulses. From this work he showed how atomic or molecular gases can be used to produce and measure attosecond pulses. He also showed how a molecule can be made to “photograph” itself.
Dr. Corkum is a fellow of the Royal Society (of London) and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the Optical Society of America’s Charles H. Townes award; the IEEE’s Quantum Electronics award, the American Physical Society’s Arthur L. Schawlow prize and the American Chemical Society’s Zewail Prize.
Dr. Corkum is an officer of the Order-of-Canada, a fellow of Royal Societies of Canada and winner of Canada’s Herzberg Award for Natural Sciences. He currently directs the Joint Attosecond Science Laboratory in Ottawa and holds a Canada Research Chair in Attosecond Technology at the University of Ottawa.
David R. Williams, Ph.D.
Univ. of Rochester, USA
Imaging Single Cells in the Living Retina
Abstract: Technologies including optical coherence tomography and adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscopy have transformed the ophthalmoscope into a microscope, revealing not only structure but also function at a cellular spatial scale in the living eye. These devices offer new views of how the healthy eye works and the diseased eye fails.
Biography:
Williams received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1979. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill in 1980 and joined the University of Rochester in 1981, where he has an appointment in the Institute of Optics as well as in the departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, and Ophthalmology. He is currently William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics. Since 1991, Williams has served as Director of Rochester’s Center for Visual Science, an interdisciplinary research program of 32 faculty interested in the mechanisms of human vision. In 2011, he was appointed Dean for Research of Arts, Science and Engineering where he is responsible for maximizing opportunities for faculty research and scholarship, including the development of partnerships with industry and government as well as other academic institutions.
Williams' research marshals optical technology to address questions about the fundamental limits of human vision. His research team demonstrated the first closed-loop adaptive optics system for the eye, showing that vision can be improved beyond that provided by conventional spectacles. This work lead to wavefront-guided refractive surgery used in more that half the refractive surgical procedures conducted worldwide today. More recently, his group has been deploying adaptive optics and other advanced imaging technologies to study the normal and diseased retina, obtaining microscopic images with unprecedented resolution in the living eye. Williams is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Awards he has received include the OSA Edgar G. Tillyer Award in 1998, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology’s Friedenwald Award in 2006, and the Bressler Prize from the Jewish Guild for the Blind in 2007.