OSA announces 1996 award winner

Charles H. Townes has received the 1996 Frederic Ives Medal/Quinn Endowment, the most prestigious honor presented by the Optical Society of America, Washington, DC. He won the award for five decades of major contributions to the field of optics, including research, education and administration, but especially for his creativity in optical physics. Townes received the Nobel Prize for his role in the invention of the maser and the laser, and is presently University Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kevin J. Bennis has been named president of Frontier Communications, whose parent company is Rochester, NY-based Frontier Corp. He is responsible for all long-distance sales, marketing, customer service and international operations. Formerly, Bennis was associated with MCI for 21 years, where he was most recently president of the integrated client services division. Robert L. Barrett has been appointed president of Frontier Network Systems and Services, with responsibility for all network operations, information technology and engineering. He will also direct the team that is developing a company-wide full-service platform, combining network, customer service and billing on one integrated system. Previously, he was executive vice president and chief technology officer at Banc One Corp.

Cees Jan Koomen has been appointed vice president and managing director of the communications and multimedia business group of Sunnyvale, CA-based Philips Semiconductors. He will oversee multimedia, digital-TV, data communications, wireless communications, multimedia PC, and audio and video products. Koomen`s career with Philips began in 1974, when he joined Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where he held a variety of engineering and technical management positions.

Robert B. Runk has been named director of fiber-optic products at Optical Corporation of America, Garden Grove, CA. He worked for 25 years at AT&T, most recently as an operations manager in the microelectronics division. Runk previously served in product and engineering management for lightwave products.

John W. Ensign has been named director of product marketing at Astarte Fiber Networks Inc., Boulder, CO. He has 20 years` experience in data communications, networking and telecommunications, including 14 years at US West Communications.

John Seely Brown, chief scientist at Xerox Corp. and director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, has been named to the board of directors of Corning Inc., Corning, NY. At Xerox, Brown has been involved in expanding the role of corporate research to include organizational and individual learning in the workplace. Brown is a cofounder of the Institute for Research and Learning, a nonprofit institute that addresses issues of lifelong learning. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

Kerry Newmoyer has been named manager of engineering and quality assurance at Berk-Tek in New Holland, PA. He joined the company in 1985 as product development engineer and is currently chairman of the Premises Wiring Subcommittee of high-performance wire and cable section of the National Electrical Manufacturers` Association. Newmoyer is also a member of BICSI.

Dale Koop has been appointed chief executive at Mountain View, CA-based Lightwave Electronics, a manufacturer of diode-pumped solid-state lasers. Former employers include the Coherent Medical Group and Rofin-Sinar Inc., a subsidiary of Siemens.

Kenneth Met¥has been named executive vice president of engineering at Integration Technologies Inc., Denver. He oversees the company`s project management of systems and applications engineering projects. Met¥spent 14 years with Bell Laboratories, where he managed system engineering activities supporting end-to-end interactive television and multimedia product development and services deployment for cable-TV multiple system operators and regional Bell operating companies.