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Nobel laureate returns to UR to give commencement address
Nobel laureate returns to UR to give commencement address
Listen to this articleNobel Prize winner Donna Strickland, who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, will be the university’s commencement speaker May 19.
Strickland now teaches physics at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, but was recognized by the Nobel committee last year for ground-breaking work she did while a graduate student in Rochester in the 1980s.
“The entire University of Rochester community was delighted when the Nobel Prize committee recognized Donna Strickland’s scientific accomplishments, and now I’m so pleased that our graduating students will be able to hear from her and share in the excitement and joy of her research and recent award,” said UR President Richard Feldman.
Strickland will be honored with two awards while in Rochester, receiving the George Eastman Medal at the commencement ceremony and the Rochester Distinguished Scholar Award the day before at the university’s doctoral ceremony, where she will also speak. She is also set to speak to the Laboratory for Laser Energetics’ Visiting Trustee Committee May 15.
Details of events surrounding the university’s graduation weekend are available online. The commencement ceremony will be streamed live.
Strickland is just the third woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics and the first female laureate from UR.
“I’m thrilled that Donna Strickland will be the College’s 2019 Commencement speaker,” said Jeff Runner, dean of UR’s College of Arts, Sciences and Engineering. “Donna’s connection to our university is one that our students and graduates can be very proud of. For our graduating seniors, this will be an opportunity to hear words of inspiration that they can take with them forever.”
Strickland shared the prize with her doctoral advisor, Gérard Mourou, who was working as an engineering professor and scientist at UR’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics when they did the work in “chirped-pulse amplification.” CPA was the focus of Strickland’s Ph.D. dissertation in optics and its use has been applied to corrective eye surgeries, data storage, and quantum computing.
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