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Press Releases Newsletters
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PSI Technical Staff are Recognized for Recent Successes
In this issue, we highlight the company's recent external and internal awards. Of particular importance to PSI staff scientists are our Technical Achievement Awards, in recognition of extraordinary scientific and engineering accomplishments in the past year. These awards have been made every year since 1981, and represent both a tangible and symbolic statement of the company's most important value: technical excellence. While many other accomplishments could have been cited, we have again selected those nominated by the staff as truly noteworthy. PSI Wins 2006 Tibbetts AwardPhysical Sciences Inc. was recently presented with a 2006 Tibbetts Award. Robert Weiss, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and B. David Green, President of R&D Operations, accepted the award on September 26 in Washington, DC.
Named for Roland Tibbetts - acknowledged as the father of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program - these prestigious, national awards are made annually to those small firms, projects, organizations and individuals judged to exemplify the very best in SBIR achievement. PSI was one of 55 companies to receive the award this year. PSI has made hundreds of contributions to national and homeland security, medical, energy and environmental technology, and highly successful product development. The common denominator in all of the company's successes has been its utilization of the SBIR program. SBIR has played an essential role in early stage development and demonstration of revolutionary technologies, and has enabled the company's growth as a highly diversified, employee-owned company with an international reputation for technical excellence. Technical Achievement AwardsPSI's annual Technical Achievement Awards were recently presented in recognition of some of the
company's most important technical accomplishments during the past year. George Caledonia, PSI's
President and Chief Executive Officer, presented the awards to this year's winners.
Dr. Daniel Hammer, Group Leader of Biomedical Imaging, received an Achievement Award in recognition of his initiative and technical leadership in several new programs involving the application of adaptive optics and retinal tracking for high resolution retinal imaging and precision laser targeting. These efforts have established PSI as a contributor to this exciting new field of ophthalmic research and has resulted in several notable publications and meeting presentations that have received international recognition.
Dr. Joel Hensley, Principal Research Scientist, received an Achievement Award for his success in the development and demonstration of external-cavity-stabilized Quantum Cascade Lasers in the long wavelength infrared and terahertz spectral regions. With NASA and DoE funding, Joel led an international team to demonstrate the feasibility of broadly tunable, single-frequency laser sources in the 8-12 µm and 60-100 µm spectral regions. Recent successes in both wavelength regions are the first of their kind, and will result in high-impact publications, further funding to PSI, and commercial sales of specialty instruments. Dr. Bogdan Cosofret, Principal Scientist, was presented an Achievement Award in recognition of his work using computed tomography (CT) of passive multi-spectral infrared data to generate 3-D chemical vapor concentration profiles. Generation of 3-D concentration distributions has been a goal of passive standoff chemical detection, and PSI has the only system capable of generating 3-D profiles in near-real-time. Demonstration of a computed tomography capability using data from early generation AIRIS sensors was critical to winning the Range Test Validation System (RTVS), which PSI is developing for the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground. Measurement of 3-D chemical vapor concentration profiles at both Redstone Technical Test Center and Dugway is essential for effective implementation of the RTVS.
Dr. Seonkyung Lee, Principal Scientist, was presented with an Achievement Award in recognition of her pioneering and groundbreaking measurements of singlet molecular oxygen produced during photodynamic therapy (PDT). This emerging treatment modality is gaining acceptance by the FDA for several forms of cancer.
Singlet oxygen has long been believed to be the key species that kills cancer cells, but no dosimeter has existed that can detect its production in-vivo. During an intense series of experiments with collaborators at Massachusetts General Hospital, Seonkyung successfully demonstrated detection of singlet molecular oxygen from tumors implanted in mice and from healthy skin of humans pretreated with photosensitizers. She not only detected singlet oxygen in the mouse tumors, but also demonstrated that the tumor mass regression measured after PDT treatment correlated with the amount of singlet oxygen produced. This extremely important result demonstrated that the PSI singlet oxygen monitor may play an important role in future cancer treatment. In the immediate future, this monitor may provide PDT researchers with a valuable tool to better understand the PDT process. These accomplishments have been presented at two international meetings.
Teoman Ustun, Senior Project Specialist, received his Achievement Award for major contributions in electronics design, signal acquisition and processing, and control systems. In his 5 years at PSI, Teoman has made major contributions to work on retinal tracking systems, retinal imagers, the adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope, the spectral domain optical coherence tomographer, the line-scanning laser ophthalmoscope, the endoscopic OCT system, and the AIRIS computed tomography system. In addition, he has successfully conducted several corporate programs that led to the development of new technologies and commercial opportunities. STAIF Outstanding Paper AwardTakashi Nakamura of PSI, San Ramon, CA, and Constance Senior, received an Outstanding Paper Award at the Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF-2005). The award, in recognition of their paper entitled "Solar Thermal Power System for Lunar ISRU Processes", was presented at the 3rd Symposium on Space Colonization. The Outstanding Paper Award was established in 1992 by The University of New Mexico's Institute for Space and Nuclear Power Studies to recognize outstanding technical contributions to the fields of all conferences and symposia of the Space Technology and Applications International Forum. Editor Donna Lamb lamb@psicorp.com Contributors George Caledonia and Bob Weiss A publication of
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