Welcome to the first LEOS Newsletter of 2008! The start of a new year often brings exciting changes, and this year is no exception. Firstly, LEOS welcomes Dr. John Marsh as new LEOS President. Dr. Marsh has a unique background of experience in academia and industry, and will certainly bring new ideas to help LEOS grow. Next, as Prof. Amr Helmy becomes LEOS Vice-President for Membership this year, we welcome Prof. Lawrence Chen of McGill University as the new Associate Editor for Canada. Prof. Chen has been active in LEOS activities for years, and is a welcome addition to the Editors team, joining Prof. Kevin Williams of the Technical University Eindhoven and Prof. Hon Tsang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
This month, we commemorate 25 years of the Journal of Lightwave Technology with a special feature article. Professors Alan Willner of the University of Southern California and Connie Chang-Hasnain of the University of California Berkeley, past and president Editors-in-Chief respectively, have written a nice retrospective on this outstanding journal. We also present a feature article by Dominic Gallagher of Photon Design Incorporated describing algorithms used in photonics modeling. Software tools are increasingly used in photonics development, and this article provides a nice overview of the techniques used in photonics design packages.
In Membership News, the Polish chapter received the award for the largest membership increase in 2007, and its activities are nicely outlined in an article by Prof. Wlodzimierz Nakwaski of the Technical University of Lódz
As always, please feel free to send any comments and suggestions to k.parameswaran@ieee.org. I would love to hear what you would like to see in the Newsletter this year. I wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2008!
Krishnan Parameswaran