Colorado State University Engineering Professors Honored as Fellows of Optical Society of America

Note to Reporters: Photos of Randy Bartels and Mario Marconi are available with the news release at http://www.news.colostate.edu/.

Randy Bartels and Mario Marconi, professors in Colorado State University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, have been elected as Fellows with the Optical Society of America for their significant contributions to the advancement of optics.

Bartels and Marconi were among 64 Fellows selected this year. The Optical Society of America, which has more than 15,000 professional members from 95 countries, promotes the science of light and the advanced technologies made possible by optics and photonics.

Randy Bartels

Bartels was recognized for “advances in ultrafast pulse shaping, quantum coherent control of electronic and molecular nuclear wavepackets, and developments in nonlinear propagation and microscopy.” He joined Colorado State in 2003, where he runs the laboratory for ultrafast and nonlinear optics. His research concentrates on the generation and control of short laser pulses and their use for the control of quantum dynamics.

In 2006, Bartels was one of 56 scientists from around the nation who received a Presidential Early Career Award, the U.S. government’s highest honor for outstanding up-and-coming scientists and engineers.

Bartels has been honored with numerous awards in his career from many disciplines – engineering, physics, chemistry, computer science and optics. He is also a Kavli fellow of the National Academies of Science and a recipient of the Sloan Research Fellow in physics, one of the oldest and most prestigious research honors in the nation. He has received a Beckman Young Investigator Award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation; the Gold Medal Human-Competitive Award; the Optical Society of America Adolph Lomb Medal; the IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award; an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award; and an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award. Bartels is also a past recipient of the prestigious Monfort Professor Award, one of Colorado State’s top honors.

Mario Marconi

Marconi was recognized for “significant contributions to the development of compact soft x-ray lasers and for pioneering their use in table top coherent lithography, holography and interferometry.” He joined Colorado State in 1992.

Prior to joining Colorado State, Marconi was a professor and deputy director in the Physics Department at the University of Buenos Aires. At Colorado State, he is a member of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology, where his research is focused in nanopatterning and high-resolution imaging. Marconi is currently exploring new possible applications of extreme ultraviolet lasers for nanofabrication and to obtain images of objects with nanometer resolution, similar to the resolution that can be achieved using electron microscopes.
Since joining Colorado State, Marconi has been involved with $5 million in research contracts awarded to the university.

Founded in 1916, the Optical Society was organized to increase and diffuse the knowledge of optics, pure and applied, and to promote the common interests of investigators of optical problems, designers and users. The Optical Society brings together optics and photonics scientists, engineers, educators and business leaders.