Peter McMahon, associate professor, was selected as the 2025 recipient of Optica’s Adolph Lomb Medal. He was honored for demonstrating new forms of optical-physics-based computing machines that might one day surpass the standard digital-electronic von Neumann computers.
“I’m very grateful to have been recognized with this award,” said McMahon. “The Lomb Medal has an amazing list of past recipients, many whose research has inspired me since graduate school. Although this award names me, it really recognizes the work my lab has done collaboratively, and which has been led by the wonderful postdocs and students I have had as colleagues in my group. I am most indebted to them.”
The Adolph Lomb Medal is presented annually to an individual who has made a noteworthy contribution to optics at an early career stage. Contributions from any area of optics, fundamental or applied, are considered. The medal was established in 1940 to honor Adolph Lomb, the Society’s first treasurer, for his devotion to the Society and the advancement of optics. In 2023, Will Renninger (B.S.’06 in engineering physics and Ph.D. ’12 in applied physics working with Professor Frank Wise) also won this medal. Renninger’s award was “For pioneering contributions to opto-mechanics, ultrashort pulse generation, novel fiber lasers, and multimode nonlinear optics.”
McMahon’s other awards include the IUPAP Early Career Scientist Prize for Applied Aspects on Laser Physics and Photonics (2022), an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award (2022), a Sloan Research Award (2022), a Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2021), a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholarship in Quantum Information Science (2020), and a Google Quantum Research Award (2019).