Open Access
Add to BibSonomy
Abstract
Optical Materials Express Editor-in-Chief, Alexandra Boltasseva, and Deputy Editor, Juejun Hu, announce the recipient of the 2020 prize for the best paper published by an emerging researcher in the Journal.
© 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement
We are pleased to announce the recipient of the 2020 OMEx Emerging Researcher Best Paper Prize.
The winning paper is Tunable photonic devices by 3D laser printing of liquid crystal elastomers [1], written by Simon Woska from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and his colleagues. The article reports 3-D laser printing of liquid crystal elastomers, a group of polymers that reversibly deform in response to external stimuli such as temperature and light. The selection committee was particularly impressed by the demonstration of tunable photonic devices based on this unique, active platform, and the thorough, in-depth discussion.
This 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 OMEx editors judged to be outstanding. The selection committee was again chaired by Deputy Editor Juejun Hu, and consists of associate editors Stavroula Foteinopoulou, Xing Sheng, and Robert Simpson, who represent a range of topics across the scope of the Journal. They were responsible for identifying a winner from among all the papers published in 2020 based on criteria including the scientific significance, quality, and presentation of the results.
Simon Woska is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Physics in the research group of Prof. Heinz Kalt at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Karlsruhe, Germany. He is also a member of the graduate school Karlsruhe School of Optics and Photonics and held a scholarship there during the first year of his Ph.D. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc., both in Physics, from KIT in 2015 and 2017 respectively. His current research focuses on the realization of polymeric photonic building block-based whispering gallery modes as well as their applications. More generally, his research interests include all kinds of (polymeric) photonic systems and their fabrication as well as the underlying optical cavities.
Please join us in congratulating Simon on his selection as the winner of the 2020 Optical Materials Express Emerging Researcher Best Paper Prize!
References
1. S. Woska, A. Münchinger, D. Beutel, E. Blasco, J. Hessenauer, O. Karayel, P. Rietz, S. Pfleging, R. Oberle, C. Rockstuhl, M. Wegener, and H. Kalt, “Tunable photonic devices by 3D laser printing of liquid crystal elastomers,” Opt. Mater. Express 10(11), 2928–2943 (2020). [CrossRef]