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Staff profiles- solid state laser engineering and nonlinear optics

 

 

Allister Ferguson, Deputy Principal and Professor of Photonics

Allister is Deputy Principal for Research and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Strathclyde. He is also the Principal Investigator of the RCUK Science Bridges Award that provides financial support for the SU2 Partnership. His research interests are in solid state lasers, nonlinear optics, biophotonics and laser spectroscopy. He is the Professor of Photonics in the Department of Physics, Associate Director of the Centre for Biophotonics and the Technical Director of the Institute of Photonics.

 

 

Eric Gustafson, Instrument Science Group Leader LIGO Laboratory Caltech

Before becoming the Instrument Science Group Leader at Caltech for the LIGO Laboratory in January 2007 Eric was the Vice President of Engineering at Lightconnect Inc. a supplier of MEMS based optical components for fiber optic telecommunications. Prior to working at Lightconnect Eric worked for 14 years as a Research Associate in the Ginzton Laboratory in the Byer-Fejer group at Stanford University and his research was on diode-laser-pumped solid-state lasers, nonlinear optics and interferometric gravitational wave detectors. In this latter area he was the Chair of the Lasers and Optics Working Group in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
 
In 1985 Eric was a founder of Yellowstone Diagnostics Inc. a biotechnology company developing an optical immunodiagnostic measurements system for allergy testing. In 1987 Yellowstone was acquired by Adeza Biomedical Inc. a women’s health care company. In 1993 Eric was a co-founder of First Medical Inc. a company developing a whole blood point-of-care platform for detection of myocardial infarction and in June 2000 First Medical Inc. was acquired by Sigma-Aldrich Inc.
 
Eric has a BS in Physics from Caltech, a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University and spent 2 years working as a Post Doc at UC Berkeley working to develop photo-conductive detectors for far infrared astronomy.

 

 

Gail McConnell, Reader & Research Councils UK Academic Fellow

Gail is a Reader & Research Councils UK Academic Fellow at the University of Strathclyde. Her research interests are solid state lasers, nonlinear optics, microscopy and biophotonics/biophysics applications including the non-invasive optical stimulation of live cells, nonlinear photolysis, optical trapping of biological media and coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering imaging.

 

 

Derryck T. Reid, Professor of Physics

Professor Derryck Reid's research concerns the development of new sources of ultrashort optical pulses, and their applications in science and engineering. His specific interests include: femtosecond optical parametric oscillators; ultrashort pulse measurement and shaping; ultra-high-resolution two-photon microscopy of silicon integrated circuits; OPO-based frequency combs; laser waveguide inscription; and IR optical coherence tomography.

 

 

Erling Riis, Professor of Physics

Erling has a background in precision laser spectroscopy and is now primarily interested in laser cooling of atoms with a view to developing techniques for atom interferometry and quantum information processing. Along with this is an interest in developing laser sources in support of these activities. This has more recently led to an interest in applications of novel light sources in Biophotonics.

 

 

Sheila Rowan, Director, Institute for Gravitational Research and Professor of Experimental Physics

Sheila is Director of the Institute for Gravitational Research, whose research programme is focussed on gravitational wave observation from the ground and in space. She is the Glasgow PI for the SU2 Partnership supported by an RCUK Science Bridges award. Her research interests include: studies of optical materials and mirror coatings of ultra-low mechanical loss and construction of mechanically-stable optical systems; ultra-stable lasers for gravitational wave detection and other precision interferometric applications.