Newsletters: 2003, Issue 4

PSI Technical Staff Honored for Recent Accomplishments

As described in a previous newsletter (Issue 1 2002), Physical Sciences Inc. places a high priority on publication of its research. We do not consider a project complete until its results have been documented and made available to our sponsor and, when appropriate, to the scientific community. It is especially gratifying, then, to have some of these publications recognized with significant awards, as reported in this newsletter.

There are many more examples of PSI research that are published in the archival literature, and cited by other researchers. In some cases, however, the product of our research cannot be published in the open literature, or is the basis of a patent application. For these and other reasons, we have made it an annual custom to announce the PSI Achievement Awards for outstanding technical contributions. Whether published in the journals or not, our internal peer review process selects the staff's most important contributions to science and technology in the past year.

Dave Green, Bill Marinelli and Bogdan Cosofret

JANNAF Best Paper Award

Members of PSI's staff received the 2003 Joint Army-Navy-NASA-Air Force (JANNAF) Exhaust Plume Technology Best Paper Award by the Exhaust Plume Technology Sub-committee (EPTS). The award was presented in recognition of their outstanding paper entitled "LWIR Imaging Spectro-radiometer Observations of Plume Structure at the 2001 SA2 Static Test," by Dave Green, Bogdan Cosofret, and Bill Marinelli, which was presented in May 2003 Meeting at the John C. Stennis Space Center.

NRL Best of Department Award

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Review annually features some of the best work performed at the laboratory. Chuck Manka, Principal Research Scientist, Research Support Instruments, Inc. (RSI), received an NRL Best of Department Review for his article entitled "Filamentation and Propagation of Ultra-Short, Intense Laser Pulses in Air." Ray Burris and Mena Stell were co-authors of an article entitled "Free-Space High-Speed Laser Communication Link Across the Chesapeake Bay."

Technical Achievement Awards

The annual PSI Technical Achievement Awards were recently presented by PSI's President and Chief Executive Officer, George Caledonia, to recognize the company's most notable technical accomplishments for the past year. This year's awardees include both first-time and repeat winners.

Charles Mazel, Principal Research Scientist, was presented with an Achievement Award in recognition of his outstanding achievement in benthic sciences, and for his nationally recognized technical leadership as the lead principal investigator of the Office of Naval Research Coastal Benthic Optical Properties (CoBOP) program. Charlie's demonstrated technical and professional leadership in this program has garnered significant visibility for PSI in this community and has resulted in the publication of three refereed journal articles in Limnology and Oceanography in 2003, as well as numerous other conference publications and presentations. The recognition of his skills has resulted in substantial additional research contracts at PSI, including the ongoing Advanced Underwater Imaging Program, and has led to the formation of PSI's Marine Optics and Imaging group.

Ray Burris, Principal Research Scientist at Research Support Instruments, Inc. (RSI), was honored for his work in free space laser communication. Before Ray’s involvement in the NRL Laser Communications Program, there had been no viable mechanism by which to satisfactorily test NRL-developed components, and no way of evaluating their concepts for atmospheric turbulence mitigation for a ground-to-orbit link. Ray showed that propagation over a horizontal path across the Chesapeake Bay is a related problem. He spearheaded the establishment of the NRL optical communications test facility at Chesapeake Bay Detachment, putting together the components and building up the facility. This has been so successful that NAVSEA is looking at applying the technology to a ship- to-ship communication system.

David Cook, Brian Decker, and Gami Maislin, Principal Scientists, were recognized for their development of PSI's Time-Domain Terahertz Spectrometer. The team's inspiration and dedication has positioned PSI at the forefront of an emerging technology field. Using the spectrometer, they acquired the first far-infrared absorption data of important explosives, biological compounds, and container materials, and published these data at international meetings. The facility has generated over $1 million in funding to date.

Daniel Ferguson, Principal Research Scientist, and Daniel Hammer, Principal Scientist, were presented with an Achievement Award in recognition of their successful project entitled "Functional Imaging of the Microcirculation System of the Eye". This work represents a breakthrough technology demonstration with several important applications. They used their Tracking Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope and a speckle correlation imaging technique to obtain detailed images of blood flow at various layers within the retina. These images of the retinal vascular structure are extremely detailed, and show great promise for development of ultra-sensitive diagnostic instruments. For example, the data demonstrates the feasibility of developing powerful diagnostics for early detection of diseases such as glaucoma, age related macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy. This successful demonstration is as elegant as it is significant, and will facilitate numerous important and exciting opportunities for PSI.

Dennis Pacheco, Principal Research Scientist, and William Russell, Senior Research Engineer, were recognized for their demonstration of the first solid-state dye laser pumped directly by a diode laser. The device has great potential as an efficient, inexpensive, compact, tunable laser source. This technology makes possible wavelength tunability in a "shoe box" size laser with over 20% wall-plug efficiency. They have made unsurpassed technical progress through an understanding of advanced polymer materials and dye properties. Laser performance has even exceeded previous results obtained with liquid host dye lasers. Furthermore, they have applied laser-engineering techniques to solid-state dye laser device designs to demonstrate performance comparable to other fixed wavelength solid-state lasers.

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