SPIE Gold Medal 2020 awarded to Ursula Keller

The SPIE Gold Medal has been awarded since 1977 in recognition of outstanding engineering or scientific accomplishments in optics, photonics, electrooptics, or imaging technologies or applications. The society has named Ursula Keller the 2020 recipient of the SPIE Gold Medal Award, in recognition of "career long pioneering contributions in ultrafast science and technology, including the development of practical ultrashort pulse lasers, the study of fundamental mechanisms and limits to modelocking and optical pulse formation, the invention of techniques for frequency comb generation and stabilization, and groundbreaking studies of the physics of light matter interactions on attosecond timescales".

Ursula Keller has been a tenured professor of physics at ETH Zurich since 1993. She is also a director of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Molecular Ultrafast Science and Technology (MUST). Her research interests are exploring and pushing the frontiers in ultrafast science and technology. Former awards she has received include the IEEE Edison Medal (2019), the European Inventor Award for lifetime achievement (2018), the IEEE Photonics Award (2018), ERC advanced grants (2012 and 2018), the OSA Charles H. Townes Award (2015), the LIA Arthur L. Schawlow Award (2013), the EPS Senior Prize (2011), the OSA Fraunhofer/Burley Prize (2008), the Leibinger Innovation Prize (2004), and the Zeiss Research Award (1998).