Prize Recipient

Howard M. Milchberg
University of Maryland

"For pioneering contributions in the fields of plasma optics, guiding ultra-intense laser beams, and developing compact, high-gradient laser-driven accelerators."

Howard Milchberg is a professor at the University of Maryland (UMd), jointly appointed to the departments of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering, and affiliated with the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, where his labs are located. His widely interdisciplinary research in high intensity laser physics spans the fields of plasma and high energy density physics, advanced particle accelerators and light sources, atomic physics, nonlinear optics, and structured light. Milchberg grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario. He received a B. Eng. in Engineering Physics from McMaster University and a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University (1985), after which he became a postdoctoral member of staff at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, and, following that, a faculty member at Maryland (1988). Milchberg is the recipient of an NSERC Postgraduate Fellowship, National Research Council of Canada; NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award; and the APS John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America, a UMd Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and a recipient of the Senior Faculty Outstanding Research Award in UMd’s Clark School of Engineering. Three of his graduate students have received APS-DPP’s Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award.