Howard Milchberg has been named a UMD Distinguished University Professor. This is the highest academic honor given to UMD faculty members.
Milchberg studies plasma and high energy density physics, advanced laser-driven particle accelerators and light sources, atomic physics, nonlinear optics, and structured light. He received his B.Eng in Engineering Physics from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University. After completing postdoc research at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Milchberg joined the University of Maryland in 1988. He has received the UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, the A. James Clark School of Engineering Senior Faculty Outstanding Research Award and an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. Three of his students have won the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Plasma Physics Dissertation Award.
Milchberg is a Fellow of Optica and of the APS. He is the recipient of two major APS honors: the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research and the Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science.
Howard Milchberg
Milchberg will discuss his work on Tuesday, Sept. 17 at 3 p.m. in room 1410 of the Toll Physics Building when he delivers the John S. Toll Endowed Lecture. Among recent achievements from his Laboratory for Intense Laser-Matter Interactions:
- Demonstration of a continuously operating optical fiber made of thin air by creating an optical guiding method using auxiliary ultrashort laser pulses to sculpt fiber optic waveguides in the air itself. This allows high-power laser beams to be guided without using common optical fibers made of strands of glass that can be damaged by high power beams. This experiment was published in the April 2023 issue of Optica.
- Record-setting all-optical laser-based acceleration of electrons to 5 billion electron volts, published in the September 2022 issue of Physical Review X.
- Setting a record with a nearly 50-meter long air waveguide in an effort to use pulsed air waveguiding to temporarily transfigure thin air into a fiber optic cable, published in the Jan. 2023 issue of Physical Review X.
- Recognition for his Lab for Intense Laser-Matter Interactions by being chosen as one of ten LaserNetUS nodes, providing funding for collaboration with US and international researchers
Along with his wife Rena and three children, Milchberg established the Irving and Renee Milchberg Endowed Lecture in honor of his late parents, both Holocaust survivors.