Peter Werle Award

The 2022 Peter Werle Award

sponsored by

Boreal, Eblana, and Nanoplus

has been bestowed upon

Adam J Fleisher

The Peter Werle Award is meant to recognize outstanding early career scientists who best exemplify Peter Werle’s scientific attributes, such as: innovation, intellectual honesty, extreme attention to detail, inquisitiveness, strong mathematical and engineering backgrounds, a proven track record of success, and achieving such success by questioning existing thinking and/or technologies.

This year's winner of the Peter Werle Early Career Researcher Award is Adam Fleisher from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD.

Adam earned his PhD in Physical Chemistry in 2011 from the University of Pittsburgh, where he measured the dipole moments of bimolecular complexes with David Pratt. In 2011, he joined Jun Ye's group at JILA. He worked extensively in frequency comb spectroscopy, including highly cited studies in time-resolved and cavity enhanced spectroscopy. In 2013, he moved to the National Institute of Standards and Technology with Joe Hodges. At NIST, Adam's contributions continued to expand across a large variety of sources and techniques, including mode-locked and electro-optic modulator frequency combs, continuous wave lasers, and cavity enhanced, cavity ringdown, sub-doppler, dual-comb, and direct frequency comb detection approaches. He is, in a word, the swiss army knife of spectroscopists. Throughout his work, Adam has never wavered from his focus on quality. He achieved measurements of the linestrengths of CO2 that are 25x better than what existed before, just 0.06% uncertainty. In doing so, he makes it possible for our networks of earth observing spectrometers from satellites to the ground to more accurately monitor the carbon in our atmosphere. And for many years, Adam has worked hard to further understand the sources of that carbon through isotope and radio-isotope ratio analysis of CO2… both through instrumentation and fundamental science. Since 13C/12C isotope measurements are referenced to a now depleted stock of fossil of a squid-like cephalopod called Belemnite that was dug up in South Carolina in the 50's, Adam recently published work in Nature Physics to create a spectroscopic reference for this carbon isotope ratio, advancing the promise of isotopic analysis traceable to the SI.

The Selection Committee:

Francesco D’Amato, Conference Chair, INO Florence

Lukas Emmenegger, EMPA

Aleksandra Foltynowicz, Umeå University

Alan Fried, University of Colorado

Livio Gianfrani, Università degli studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

Frans Harren, Nijmegen University

Erik Kerstel, Conference Chair, University of Grenoble Alps

Greg Rieker, Selection Committe Presider, University of Colorado

Gerard Wysocki, Princeton University

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Sponsored by

Aerodyne, Alpes Lasers, and Boreal

The 2018 Peter Werle Award went to

Greg Rieker

The 2018 Peter Werle Early Career Scientist Award Justifiction

The 2018 Peter Werle Early Career Scientist Award is awarded to Dr. Greg Rieker from University of Colorado at Boulder, whose scientific achievements, drive for innovation, and interest in applications and commercialization are in line with the criteria of the award.

Dr. Rieker received his MSc degree in mechanical engineering in 2004, and a PhD degree in mechanical engineering in 2009, both at Stanford University. His PhD thesis on ‘Wavelength-Modulation Spectroscopy for Measurements of Gas Temperature and Concentration in Harsh Environments’ was conducted in the group of prof. Ronald Hanson. After PhD he co-founded a company Fluence for development of plasma accelerators for medical purposes, and spectrometers for plasma beams. In the years 2012-13 he was a postdoctoral research associate at NIST, Boulder, developing frequency comb spectrometers for gas phase measurements in atmospheric systems. Since 2013 he is an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is leading the Precision Laser Diagnostics group.

The main research contributions and interests of Dr. Rieker are in the field of laser-based sensing and control in energy, atmospheric and industrial systems, and his activities span from fundamental research to applied science. His early work focused on methods for measurements of gas temperature and concentration in combustion and high pressure environments. Currently, he develops optical measurement systems based on diode lasers and optical frequency combs, and applies them for sensing in atmospheric and combustion environments. His scientific contributions were instrumental in bringing the optical frequency combs to the field and using them for open path measurements of greenhouse gases, for methane leak detection, and for measurements in challenging combustion environments. In combustion, his work spans from in situ dual comb spectroscopy measurements in a power plant to laboratory-based precision spectroscopy of high-temperature water, with the aim to create an absorption database for field-based sensors.

Dr. Rieker is an enthusiastic and inspiring leader, with strong entrepreneurial spirit. In his work, he shows great attention to detail and never loses sight of the field applications. The breadth of his research, his drive to bring the techniques to the field, and his success in doing it, make Dr. Rieker and his research work to stand out in terms of quality, innovation and scientific impact.

The Selection Committee:

Francesco D’Amato, Conference Chair, INO Florence

Lukas Emmenegger, EMPA

Aleksandra Foltynowicz, Selection Committe Presider, Umeå University

Alan Fried, University of Colorado

Livio Gianfrani, Università degli studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

Frans Harren, Nijmegen University

Erik Kerstel, Conference Chair, University of Grenoble Alps

Kevin Lehmann, University of Virginia

Juergen Roepcke, INP Greifswald

Frank Tittel, Rice University

Gerard Wysocki, Princeton University

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The 2016 Peter Werle Early Career Scientist Award

sponsored by:

Aerodyne, Thermo-Fisher, and Li-Cor

has been presented to

Aleksandra Foltynowicz

during the Conference dinner on September 14 at the Hotel Palace de Menthon

Aleksandra Foltynowicz, 2016 recipient of the Peter Werle Award

Motivation for the attribution of the 2016 Peter Werle Early Career Scientist Award

The 2016 Peter Werle Early Career Scientist Award is being awarded to Dr. Aleksandra Foltynowicz from Umeå University in Sweden, whose excellent research record strongly resonates with all the criteria considered in this award.

Dr. Foltynowicz received her MSc degree from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in 2005, and a PhD degree from Umeå University in 2009, both in physics. Her PhD thesis on “Fiber-laser-based noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectrometry” was conducted in the group led by Prof. Ove Axner. In the years 2010-2012 she conducted post-doctoral research on cavity-enhanced frequency comb spectroscopy in the group of Prof. Jun Ye at JILA, University of Colorado at Boulder. Since 2012 she is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Umeå University, where she is heading the Optical Frequency Comb Spectroscopy Group.

The research accomplishments and interests of Dr. Foltynowicz have been largely focused on ultra-high precision molecular spectroscopy with a recent focus on ultra-broadband laser spectroscopy of multiple molecular species. Early in her career she developed a sensitive and robust fiber-laser-based noise-immune cavity-enhanced optical heterodyne molecular spectroscopy (NICE-OHMS) system, and revised models for Doppler- and sub-Doppler molecular absorption and dispersion in saturated conditions. More recently Dr. Foltynowicz has tackled important scientific problems and developments of novel detection techniques involving optical frequency comb (OFC) sources in the near- and mid-infrared. These research directions allowed her to expand the capabilities of these novel sources and both push the limits of broadband spectroscopic detection as well as open new avenues for applications that were not possible before. One outstanding example is her work on cavity-enhanced OFC spectroscopy in flames, the first demonstration of in-situ OFC spectroscopy in a challenging combustion environment. Building upon her previous very successful work on NICE-OHMS and OFCs, she demonstrated a broadband, highly sensitive, and high-resolution spectroscopic technique, NICE-OFCS, that allows fast acquisition of the entire spectral bands with the detection sensitivity directly scalable with the cavity finesse. She also developed a method that overcomes the nominal resolution limit of Fourier transform spectroscopy and allows the measurement of broadband absorption spectra without any influence of the instrumental line shape function and with frequency accuracy given by the OFCs.

Her experimental work is always accompanied by a thorough theoretical analysis with extreme attention to detail. She also has a great sense for potential implementations of her highly advanced systems to important scientific challenges and practical sensing applications. This unique combination of theoretical and experimental finesse makes Dr. Foltynowicz and her research work to stand out in terms of quality, innovation and scientific impact.

The Selection Committee:

Francesco D’Amato,INO Florence, Conference Chair

Lukas Emmenegger, EMPA

Alan Fried, University of Colorado

Livio Gianfrani, 2^nd University of Naples

Frans Harren, Nijmegen University

Clemens Kaminski, University of Cambridge

Erik Kerstel, University of Grenoble Alps, Conference Chair

Kevin Lehmann, University of Virginia

Joergen Roepcke, INP Greifswald

Frank Tittel, Rice University

Gerard Wysocki, Princeton University, President of the selection committee and 2014 Werle Award recepient

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The 2014 Peter Werle Early Career Scientist Award