Speakers

Dr. William D. Phillips

Plenary Speaker

Nobel Prize Laureate, 1997 / Fellow, Joint Quantum Institute, NIST / Distinguished University Professor, UMD

Quantum Information: a scientific evolution for the 21st century

Two of the great scientific and technical revolutions of the 20th century were the discovery of the quantum nature of the submicroscopic world, and the advent of information science and engineering. Both of these have had a profound effect on both our daily lives and on our worldview. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, we see a marriage of quantum mechanics and information science in a new revolution: quantum information. Quantum communication and quantum computation are two aspects of this revolution. The first is highly speculative: a new paradigm as different from today's digital computers as they are from the abacus. The second is already a reality, providing information transmission whose security is guaranteed by the laws of physics. Both directions are intimately connected with the frontiers of optics.

Speaker Bio:

William D. Phillips was born in 1948, in Wilkes-Barre PA, and attended public schools in Pennsylvania. He received the B.S. in Physics from Juniata College (a small, church-related, liberal arts college in Huntingdon PA) in 1970. He did his graduate research at MIT, receiving his Ph.D. in 1976. After two years as a Chaim Weizmann postdoctoral fellow at MIT, he joined the staff of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (then the National Bureau of Standards) in 1978, where he is now the leader of the Laser Cooling and Trapping Group in the Atomic Physics Division of NIST's Physics Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute, a cooperative research organization of NIST and the University of Maryland. Dr. Phillips is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The research group led by Dr. Phillips has developed techniques for manipulation of matter with light. Among the group's activities are cooling gases to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. In 1997, Dr. Phillips shared the Nobel Prize in Physics "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light".

Dr. Thomas M. Baer

Plenary Speaker

2009 President, Optical Society of America / 2009 Executive Director, Stanford Research Center, Stanford University

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Baer is currently the Executive Director of the Stanford Photonics Research Center and a member of the Applied Physics Department at Stanford University. His current research is focused on developing imaging and analysis technology for exploring the molecular basis of developmental biology and neuroscience. From 1996 to 2005 Dr. Baer was the CEO, chairman, and founder of Arcturus Bioscience, a biotechnology company located in Mountain View, CA, which he established in 1996. Arcturus Bioscience pioneered the area of Microgenomics by developing and manufacturing laser microdissection instrumentation and integrated bioreagent systems. Arcturus developed products that allowed precise genetic analysis of microscopic tissue samples and which were integrated into a new generation of cancer diagnostic tests. Prior to Arcturus, Dr. Baer was Vice President of Research at Biometric Imaging, where he led an interdisciplinary group developing products with applications in the areas of AIDS monitoring, bone marrow transplant therapy, and blood supply quality control. From 1981 to 1992 Dr. Baer was at Spectra-Physics, Inc., where he held positions as Vice-President of Research and Spectra-Physics Fellow. While at Spectra-Physics his research focused on ultra-fast lasers, optical pulse compression, diode-pumped solid-state lasers, and non-linear optics. Dr. Baer has made major contributions in the areas of biotechnology, quantum electronics, and laser applications, and is listed as an inventor on 60 patents and is a co-author on many peer reviewed publications in a number of different scientific fields. His commercial products have received many industry awards for design innovation. Co-founder of four companies in Silicon Valley, he was named entrepreneur of the year for emerging companies in Silicon Valley in 2000, by the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Dr. Baer graduated with a BA degree in Physics Magna Cum Laude from Lawrence University and received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in Atomic Physics from the University of Chicago. He is also an alumnus of Harvard Business School and in 1994 he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Lawrence University. He has been elected to the status of Fellow in two international scientific societies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and The Optical Society of America (OSA) and will serve as the President of OSA in 2009.