Plenary Speakers

University of Ottawa

Albert Stolow is the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Photonics and Professor of Physics & Chemistry at the University of Ottawa. He founded the Molecular Photonics Group within the National Research Council Canada where he maintains an ongoing collaborative research program. He is Adjunct Professor of Chemistry and of Physics at Queen’s University in Kingston. Stolow is also a Fellow of the Max-Planck-uOttawa Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics. His research interests include ultrafast molecular dynamics, quantum control, strong field physics of polyatomic molecules, and coherent non-linear optical microscopy.

Albert Stolow studied at Queen’s University and then obtained his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Physics from the University of Toronto in 1988, under Nobel Laureate John C. Polanyi. Stolow was an NSERC post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 1989-1992 where he worked with Nobel Laureate Yuan T. Lee. In fall 1992, Stolow joined the National Research Council in Ottawa, rising to the position of Group Leader and Principal Research Officer. In 2014, he assumed the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Photonics at the University of Ottawa. Stolow is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society (2008) and the Optical Society of America (2009). He has won several national prizes including the Earle K. Plyler Prize of the American Physical Society, the Polanyi Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (Canada), the Laidler Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, and the Barringer Award of the Spectroscopy Society of Canada. Stolow sits on the editorial boards of numerous international journals and on the Advisory Boards of several international research institutions. Stolow is currently Chair-Elect of the American Physical Society’s Division of Chemical Physics (DCP) and past-Member of the Executive Committee of the American Physical Society’s Division of Laser Science (DLS).

University of Bristol

Sir Michael Berry is a theoretical physicist at the University of Bristol, where he has been for more than twice as long as he has not.  His research centres on the relations between physical theories at different levels of description (classical and quantum physics, ray optics and wave optics…). In addition to these deeply mathematical, often geometric, studies, he also delights in finding familiar phenomena illustrating deep concepts – the arcane in the mundane: rainbows, the sparkling of the sun on the sea, twinkling starlight, polarized light in the sky, tidal bores...