Abstract:

This talk reviews the development of new lasers and their applications as seen through a strong interest in the physics and chemistry of optics and atomic and molecular dynamics. It shows how the research in basic science can lead to fundamentally new applications in the practical world. This landscape is set against the evolving national interest of the funders of science research. This is a broad perspective, although illustrated with very specific examples. Osgood will illustrate this through his own experience and that of his research and collaborators.

Biography:

Richard M. Osgood, Jr. (SM'82, F'87) was born in Kansas City, MO. He received his BS Degree (Engineering) from the U.S. Military Academy, his MS degree (Physics) from the Ohio State University, and his PhD (Physics) from MIT (1973). His PhD research in new molecular lasers and their vibrational dynamics and spectroscopy was supervised by Ali Javan. In January 1973, he joined the scientific staff of MIT Lincoln Laboratory and in 1981 he was appointed a faculty member at Columbia University, where he became Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics in 1992. While on a leave of absence from Columbia from 2000 to 2002, he served as Associate Laboratory Director (Basic Energy Sciences) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a position, which included the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Condensed Matter Physics, the National Synchrotron Light Source, and the Chemistry and the Materials Departments. He has been a member of the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) and served as chair of the Facilities Visiting Committee for DOE BES, and the Basic Energy Science Advisory Committee.

Osgood's research has included new classes of lasers as well as understanding the dynamics of their material medium, the physics and applications of laser surface interactions, linear and nonlinear Si integrated optics and physics, the electronic structure of low dimensional of materials and nanostructures, and computational electromagnetics. He has published ~500 research papers, written one book, edited several anthologies, and been awarded 19 patents. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the IEEE, the Optical Society of America (OSA), and the National Academy of Inventers. He has served as a Councilor of the Materials Research Society, and Travelling Lecturer for the APS and the OSA. In 1991, he, along with Dan Ehrlich and Tom Deutsch, received the Wood Prize for their research on Laser Surface Chemistry for Material Processing and the IEEE Photonics Quantum Electronics Award. He is also an editor for the Springer Series on Materials Science and has been an associate editor for IEEE JQE.

Hosted by Professor Debasis Mitra, Electrical Engineering