Colorado State Professor Receives Prestigious Awards from the National Science Foundation and Optical Society of America

Randy Bartels, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Colorado State University, recently was awarded prestigious national awards from two prominent scientific organizations. Bartels was awarded the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award and the Optical Society of America Adolph Lomb Medal. Bartels received both honors for his exceptional achievements and contributions in the early stages of his career.

"Early in his career, Dr. Bartels is already known as a national leader in the important field of ultrafast optics and lasers," said Anthony Maciejewski, department head of electrical and computer engineering at Colorado State. "We are proud to have Randy as a member of our faculty and pleased that he was honored with these well-deserved awards."

The NSF Faculty Early Career Development award is a part of a foundation-wide program that offers the NSF’s most prestigious awards for new faculty members. The program recognizes and supports early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders for the 21st century. Awardees are selected on the basis of creative career-development success that effectively integrates research and education.  

The OSA’s Adolph Lomb Medal is awarded annually to one individual internationally who has made significant contributions to the field of optics before the age of 35. Bartels is being recognized with the OSA award for his pioneering contributions to the coherent control of light, atoms and molecules.  

In addition, Bartels is a finalist for the American Physical Society Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Atomic, Molecular or Optical Physics. Before joining the electrical and computer engineering department in 2003, Bartels earned his doctoral degree in electrical engineering at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. His research has concentrated on the generation and control of short laser pulses and their use for the control of quantum and extreme nonlinear optical systems.  

Bartels has received numerous other awards and was selected as a member of the U.S. delegation to attend the 51st annual meeting of Nobel laureates in Lindau, Germany. He also has published more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and has been invited to speak at more than 25 conferences. His research has been reported in trade publications and the popular press, including Scientific American and on KUNC. Bartels is a member of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society and the Laser and Electro-optics Society/ Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

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