Self-focusing: Past and Present / Topics in Applied Physics Bd.114 (PDF)

Dr. Lukishova was born in Moscow, Russia. She received her M.S. degree in Physics (with high honors) and Ph.D. degree (1977) from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (FizTech). Her M.S. and Ph.D. research was performed at the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Her Ph.D. thesis was supervised by P.P. Pashinin and Nobel Prize winner A.M. Prokhorov and involved spatial beam-profile and temporal pulse-shape control in laser-fusion systems. After holding research positions at the I.V. Kurchatov Nuclear Power Institute, Troitsk branch TRINITI (Moscow Region), the Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), and the Liquid Crystal Institute (Kent, Ohio), she joined the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester in 1999 where she holds the position of Senior Scientist. She has received a Long-Term Grant from the International Science (G. Soros) Foundation and Grants from the Russian Government and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research for her work on nonlinear optics. Dr. Lukishova's research interests include both optical material and optical radiation properties. She has more than 30 years experience with the development of high-power laser systems and the interaction of laser radiation with matter. Currently her main research areas are nonlinear optics and photonic quantum information systems. She has near 170 scientific publications and awarded one US patent and 3 USSR Inventor Certificates.

Yuen-Ron Shen

Y. R. Shen received his BS degree from the National Taiwan University in 1956 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1963 under the supervision of Nicolaas Bloembergen. After a year of postdoctoral work at Harvard, he was appointed to the Physics faculty of the University of California at Berkeley where he has been ever since. He has also been associated with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 1966.

Shen's research interest is in the broad area of interaction of light with matter. He was involved in the early development of nonlinear optics, searching for basic understanding of various nonlinear optical phenomena. He is the author of the widely used text "The Principles of Nonlinear Optics". He contributed to the early accurate determination of band structures of semiconductors by developing a high-resolution wavelength-modulation spectroscopic technique. He initiated the field of nonlinear optics in liquid crystals and applications of nonlinear optics to characterization of liquid crystals. He pioneered the development of optical second harmonic generation and sum-frequency generation as powerful spectroscopic tools for surface and interface studies and their applications to many neglected, but important, areas of surface science. More recently, he has devoted himself to the development of sum-frequency generation as a novel sensitive probe for molecular chirality.

Shen has received numerous prestigious awards including the 1986 Charles H. Townes Award of the OSA, the 1992 Arthur L. Schawlow Prize and the 1998 Frank Isakson Prize of the APS, and the 1996 Max-Planck Research Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Academia Sinica. He is also a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.