The first “Mansoor Sheik-Bahae Award for Best Dissertation” is awarded to Ms. Xiaobing Zhu, for her dissertation on “Phase Nanoscopy with Correlated Frequency Combs”.  Xiaobing Zhu came to the University of New Mexico’s Optical Science and Engineering Program in 2019 with a M.E. in Optical Engineering from the Sichuan University in China. She joined the research group of Professor Jean-Claude Diels as a Research Assistant. With no background in lasers and electronics, she was put in charge of constructing a femtosecond Op- tical Parametric Oscillator together with its pump: a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser. Aligning this system is similar — but more challenging — than a blind date, since there is no visual guide to position mirrors with micron accuracy.

With many lonely hours spent in a dark laboratory, she succeeded. Dr. Diels would often notice that she was the only living soul working in the Center for High Technology and Materials building on weekends and holidays. That perseverance resulted in an amazing precision of 0.05 nanoradian in phase measurement, which can be implemented for measuring displacements (10−18 m), acceleration, rotation magnetic and electric fields etc...

The dissertation makes a milestone in nonlinear optics, a field cherished by the late Distinguished Professor, Mansoor Sheik- Bahae, and thus worthy of this award.