Three CREOL Professors Honored with 2026 SPIE Society Awards
Three CREOL Professors were recognized with prestigious awards by SPIE for their significant achievements in the field of optics and photonics.
UCF Trustee Chair Professor Shin-Tson Wu, UCF Trustee Chair and Pegasus Professor Peter Delfyett, and UCF Distinguished Professor and Former Dean Bahaa Saleh were selected for the honors, out of 21 total recipients for 2026.
According to SPIE: “Honoring transformative advancements across a range of professional areas — including medicine, astronomy, lithography, optical metrology, optical design, and community leadership — the Society’s awards recognize technical accomplishments as well as committed service to SPIE and support of its organizational mission.”
“Dennis Gabor received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971 for his invention of holography,” Wu says. “I am so grateful to receive this prestigious SPIE award. I would like to thank my former and present group members for their innovative work on liquid crystal polarization volume gratings, which led to widespread applications in AI-assisted augmented reality glasses.”
“I am grateful to SPIE for recognizing my lifelong commitment to education in optics and photonics,” Saleh says. “I am deeply moved by the many congratulatory notes I received from students and readers of my books who shared how my work has influenced their education.”
Read more about the SPIE Society Awards here.
