Majed Chergui elected OSA Fellow

The Optical Society was founded in 1916 as the Optical Society of America (OSA) with the purpose of advancing the study of light in both theory and application. As such, the OSA recognizes distinguished achievements in the field of both optics and photonics, and supports the community with a number of grants, educational initiatives, and technical programs.

OSA Fellows are members who have distinguished themselves through their work and have been nominated by other OSA Fellows. Overall, the OSA, which counts some 19,000 members, keeps its Fellows restricted to only 10% of that number.

Professor Majed Chergui directs EPFL’s Laboratory of Ultrafast Spectroscopy, which pursues a variety of ultrafast UV and X-ray spectroscopic studies on chemical and biological systems. Chergui is also a founding Editor-in-chief of the journal Structural Dynamics, a flagship journal of the American Institute of Physics and the American Crystallographic Association.

With this fellowship, the OSA recognizes Professor Chergui “for pioneering ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy and for his major contributions to the development of ultrafast deep-ultraviolet spectroscopy, which he used to address fundamental light-induced processes in molecules, proteins and materials.” As an OSA Fellow, Professor Chergui joins “a distinguished group of members who have served the Society and the optics and photonics community with distinction”.