Optics Professor Dennis G. Hall has been named director of the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics. Hall served as associate director of the institute from April 1, 1992 until July 1, 1993, when he became director.
Hall is a fellow of both the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE). He also serves as an elected member of the OSA board of directors, a member of the executive committee of the National Nanofabrication Facility at Cornell University, and a member of the Technical Advisory Board of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
Hall is well known in the optics community for his research on novel semiconductor lasers, optical waveguide phenomena, and impurity-related luminescence mechanisms in Group IV semiconductors. His research on concentric-circle-grating, surface-emitting, gallium arsenide semiconductor lasers was selected by OSA to appear in its end-of-year summary of research highlights published in the December 1992 issue of Optics and Photonics News. It was one of only three optics and photonics projects selected by the American Institute of Physics for inclusion in its end-of-year summary, Physics in 1992.
Hall is the author or co-author of nearly 100 journal articles and several book chapters. He has for several years taught a short course on integrated optics as part of the OSA annual meeting, and is the editor of an upcoming SPIE Milestones volume titled Coupled Mode Theory in Guided-Wave Optics.
Hall has been active in both undergraduate and graduate education at Rochester. The University's Undergraduate Engineering Council, a student organization, has honored him twice for his teaching, which it calls outstanding. Hall has supervised to completion twelve Ph.D. theses and six M.S. theses, and has served as a member of both the institute's undergraduate and graduate committees, chairing the latter from 1987 until 1992. The U.S. Department of Education has awarded him two three- year grants, the first in 1990 and the second in 1993, totaling approximately $650,000 for the support of graduate students in the Institute of Optics.
Hall joined the Rochester faculty in 1980 after two years with McDonnell Douglas Corporation in St. Louis. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois, his master's degree from Southern Illinois University, and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Tennessee, all in physics. His Ph.D. research in theoretical solid state physics was conducted at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory under the direction of Dr. J.S. Faulkner.
Hall succeeds Duncan T. Moore, Rudolph and Hilda Kingslake Professor of Optical Engineering, who served as director for six years. Moore remains on the Rochester faculty but is spending the next year on sabbatical leave in Washington, D.C., serving as an American Physical Society Congressional Fellow. tr
Note to Editors: Hall, his wife Rita, and their three children live on Vantage Drive in Pittsford.