Please join me in congratulating the 28 LEOS members who became IEEE Fellows this year. It’s a significant honor that is based on major technical contributions, leadership, and service to the Institute and the profession. The number of Fellows who can be elected in a given year is limited to one- per-thousand IEEE members in the so-called “higher grades,” which includes Member, Senior Member, and Fellow Grades.
I’d also like to thank the nominators, reviewers, and committee members who put a lot of time and effort into the selection process. It’s a roughly nine-months-long process that starts with the submission of four-page nomination forms, reference forms from between five and eight current Fellows, and other supporting materials. Candidates must already be Senior Members. Each nomination is reviewed, rated, and ranked by the Fellows Committee of an IEEE Society or Council chosen by the nominator. Then, the IEEE Fellows Committee reviews all of the materials and chooses which nominations to recommend to the Board of Directors. Generally, fewer than half of the nominations are successful.
If you hurry, you may just have time to nominate someone for the 2003 selection process. The deadline is March 15. For more information, and to learn how to submit a nomination, I encourage you to check out the Fellows page on the IEEE Web Portal at:
www.ieee.org/about/awards/fellows/fellows.htm
As a step toward a Fellow nomination later, you may wish to consider nominating someone for Senior Membership or, since Members can apply for Senior Membership, encourage them to do so. Either way, this process is fairly easy and can be done online at:
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/rab/md/smprogram.html

Yasuhiro Ando
Fujikura Ltd., Koto-ku, Japan
For contributions to optical connector technologies.

Daniel J. Blumenthal
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
For contributions to optical packet switching and agile optical networking.

Kent D. Choquette
University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, Urbana, IL
For contributions to the development of semiconductor vertical cavity surface emitting laser diodes.

Jan Conradi
Corning, Inc., Corning, NY
For contributions to the advancement of optical fiber communications systems.

Richard Michael De La Rue
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
For contributions to integrated optics research, from lithium niobate to photonic crystals.

Silvano Donati
University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
For contributions to electro-optical instrumentation and photodetector noise theory.

Robin Evans
University of Melbourne, Aspendale, Victoria, Australia
For contributions to target tracking, industrial control, and signal processing.

Yeshaiahu Fainman
University of California, San Diego, CA
For contributions to the use of optical nonlinearities for signal processing.

Denis R. Hall
Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, UK
For contributions to the physics and engineering of high power gas and waveguide lasers.

Kazuo Hotate
The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
For contributions to fiber optics gyroscopes and distributed fiber optic sensors.

Kristina M. Johnson
Duke University, Durham, NC
For contributions to optoelectronic processing systems and liquid crystal devices.

Nan Marie Jokerst
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
For contributions to the integration and packaging of optoelectronic devices for the realization of optical interconnections and interfaces.

Ken-ichi Kitayama
Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
For contributions to optical fiber communications, radio-on-fiber communications, and photonic networks.

Masanori Koshiba
Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
For contributions to the modeling of optical wave propagation in photonics devices.

Prem Kumar
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
For the development of nonlinear optical devices for communication networks.

El-Hang Lee
Inha University, Inchon City, South Korea
For contributions to optical devices for communication.

James Robert Leger
University of Minnesota
For the development and application of diffractive and microoptical components.

Chung-Sheng Li
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY
For contributions to digital libraries and universal multimedia access.

Toshihiko Makino
San Jose, CA
For contributions to the development and commercialization of gain-coupled distributed feedback semiconductor lasers.

Antonio Mecozzi
University of L’Aquila, Poggio di Roio, Italy
For contributions to the theory of nonlinear transmission in optical fibers.

Robert A. Minasian
The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
For contributions to photonic signal processing of microwave signals.

Tadashi Nishimura
Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Hyogo, Japan
For leadership in the development of advanced CMOS devices and process technologies.

Katsunari Okamoto
NTT Electronics Corporation (NEL), Ibaraki-pref., Japan
For contributions to optical fiber technologies and wavelength-division-multiplexed communications.

Arthur C. Paolella
Jamison, PA
For contributions to optical control of microwave monolithic integrated circuits.

Meint K. Smit
Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
For contributions to optoelectronic integration, in particular for wavelength division multiplexing applications.

Richard A. Soref
Air Force Research Laboratory, Hanscom Air Force Base, MA
For contributions to the development of silicon-based optoelectronics.

W. John Tomlinson
JDS Uniphase Corp., West Trenton, NJ
For contributions to micro-optic components for fiber optic systems.

Elias D. Towe
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
For contributions to nanostructure optoelectronic technology.