Light-Based Science (PDF)

Roshdi Rashed is the author of several books and scientific articles in History of Science. He is currently Emeritus Director of Research (special class) at CNRS (France). He was director of the Centre for History of Arab and Medieval Science and Philosophies (until 2001) Paris, and also director of the doctoral formation in epistemology and history of science, Paris Diderot University (until 2001). He is Emeritus Professor at Tokyo University, and at the Mansoura University, and also at the Paris Diderot University. He was a founder (1984) and Director (until May 1993) of the REHSEIS (Research Epistemology and History of Science and Scientific Institutions) research team, CNRS, Paris. He had several distinctions including: the CNRS Bronze medal (1977), Knight of the Honour Legion (1989), the Alexandre Koyré medal of the International Academy for History of Science (1990), the history of science medal and award of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (1990), medal and award of Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (1999), Avicenna gold medal of UNESCO (1999), medal of CNRS (2001), medal of the Arab World Institute (2004). He had several honorary positions as Vice-President of the International Academy of the History of Science (1997), member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences (2002), member of the Tunisian Academy "Bayt al-Hikma" (2012).

V. Lakshminarayanan (Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley) is currently a professor of vision science, physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He has held visiting and faculty appointments at the universities of California at Berkeley, at Irvine, University of Missouri, the University of Michigan, Glasgow Caledonian University and the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He is also an adjunct professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ryerson Unversity (Toronto). He has had numerous honors, including Fellow of OSA, SPIE, AAAS, APS, IoP, etc., a senior member of IEEE and the recipient of a number of awards including most recently the Esther Hoffman Beller medal of OSA (2013), and the Optics Educator award of SPIE (2011). He has been a KITP Scholar at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was a AAAS science an technology policy fellow finalist and serves on the optics advisory board of the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. He is a founding member of the UNESCO ALOP program. He also served as member at large of the US IUPAP committee of the NAS, the Chair of the US International Commission on Optics committee, Chair of the APS Committee on International Scientific Affairs, a member of the international steering committee of the International Year of Light 2015, a member of the education committee of the National Photonics Initiative and has served as a director of OSA. He is a consultant to the ophthalmic and medical devices section of the FDA (from 2013). He is technical editor or section editor of a number of journals including Journal of Modern Optics (from 2003) and Optics Letters (from 2010). He is currently the Chair of the education committee of SPIE (2015-2017) He has authored or edited about 12 books, and over 300 publications in topics ranging from optical physics and engineering , neuroscience, bioengineering, applied math and ophthalmology/optometry.