Vahala and Collaborators Receive OSA Team Engineering Excellence Award

Professor Kerry Vahala and team awarded OSA's 2020 Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award for their 2-Photon Optical Clock Collaboration.

The Optical Society (OSA) presented the 2-Photon Optical Clock Collaboration with the award for the 2020 Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award on September 16, 2020 during the OSA Frontiers in Optics (FiO) + Laser Science (LS) Plenary Session. The team of collaborators comprises researchers and engineers from California Institute of Technology, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The honor was extended to this group of researchers "for the development of an optical atomic clock architecture that leverages microfabricated photonic components, leading to a vast reduction in size, weight, and power for next generation applications in timing, navigation, and communication".

2020 OSA President Stephen Fantone commented, "This team's work utilizing microfabricated vapor cells promises a new generation of miniaturized optical atomic clocks that would have broad commercial implications...This is an exciting development, and OSA is proud to recognize the team's outstanding work."

Read more details here.