Kerry Vahala
Kerry J. Vahala is an American professor of Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He holds the Ted and Ginger Jenkins chair of Information Science and Technology and also serves as the Executive Officer of the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Physics and an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering, all from Caltech.
Vahala is known for his studies of devices called optical microcavities1 and their application to a wide range of subjects including miniature frequency and time systems, microwave sources, parametric oscillators, astrocombs and gyroscopes. He also made early contributions to the subject of cavity optomechanics2 and was involved in demonstrations of chip-based devices to cavity QED phenomena3.
Vahala is a Fellow of the IEEE and the Optical Society of America, has received an Alexander von Humboldt Award4 for his work on high-Q optical microcavities, an award from NASA for work on Astrocombs and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering5. He also contributed to the understanding of quantum well lasers for optical communications, and shared with Y. Arakawa and K. Lau the 2009 IEEE David Sarnoff Award for research on quantum-well laser dynamics6. Their "combined work formed the basis for nearly all of today’s high-speed semiconductor laser design for lightwave high-speed telecommunications, particularly in the metropolitan and local-area arena”. He has also received the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the ONR Young Investigator Award, and was the first recipient of Caltech’s Feynman Hughes Fellowship7.
Vahala has served as associate editor to both Photonics Technology Letters and the Journal of the Optical Society, is on the advisory board of APL Photonics, and was Program Chair and General Chair for the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) in 2000 and 2001.
References
[1] K. J. Vahala, 'Optical Microcavities', Nature 424, 839-846 (2003)
[2] T. J. Kippenberg and Kerry J. Vahala, "Cavity Optomechanics: Back-Action at the Mesoscale", Science 321, 1172-1176 (2008)
[3] T. Aoki, B. Dayan, E. Wilcut, W. P. Bowen, A. S. Parkins, T. J. Kippenberg, K. J. Vahala, and H. J. Kimble, "Observation of strong coupling between one atom and a monolithic microresonator" Nature 443, 671-674 (2006)
[4] http://galcit.caltech.edu/news/248
[5] https://www.nae.edu/224716/Dr-Kerry-J-Vahala
[6] https://www.ieee.org/about/awards/bios/sarnoff-recipients.html
[7] http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/11225/title/People--Physicist-Kerry-Vahala-Is-First-Recipient-Of-Caltech-s-Feynman-Hughes-Fellowship/