Tracing its roots back more than a century through the original Journal of the Optical Society of America (JOSA), JOSA A has a rich heritage and stands as an authoritative archival journal. Our cited half-life exceeds a decade and the longevity of some JOSA and JOSA A articles is on par with a good long career [1]. We are particularly pleased to see important contributions from early-career researchers as we expect that their JOSA A papers will be like a vein of granite running through the bedrock foundations of their portfolio of work.

We are therefore delighted to announce our new prize for the best paper from an emerging researcher, and its inaugural winner. The prize recognizes a student or early-career researcher (within five years of earning his/her highest degree) who is the first author of a paper that a committee of JOSA A editors judged to be outstanding. The selection committee is chaired by Deputy Editor Christine Fernandez-Maloigne, and consists of topical editors representing a range of topics across the scope of the Journal. They were responsible for identifying a winner from among all the papers published in 2018 based on criteria including the scientific significance, quality, and presentation of the results.

The winning article, “Are Bessel beams resilient to aberrations and turbulence?”, written by Nokwazi Mphuthi from the University of the Witwatersrand, and her colleagues, studies the spread of Bessel beams through aberrations to show that, in contrast to a number of hypotheses, self-healing is not guaranteed, but is rather a function of the severity of the aberration, and the article details the parameters that influence this [2]. The selection committee was particularly impressed by the originality of the study, the depth of the scientific analysis, and the clarity of presentation.

Nokwazi Mphuthi is a PhD student with a BSc in Land Surveying from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. As part of her MSc project, she worked on a project in collaboration with Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (South Africa), NASA (USA), and Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur (France) to develop the first Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) system in the Southern Hemisphere. An extension of the LLR work to increase the efficiency of the system paved the way for collaborations between the Structured Light lab at the University of the Witwatersrand and HartRAO. The project aims to increase the photon return rate of laser ranging systems using structured light and someday provide a means for sending orbital angular momentum to the Moon.

Please join us in congratulating Nokwazi on her selection as the winner of the 2018 JOSA A Emerging Researcher Best Paper Prize!