Honoring A Lifetime of Achievement
The OSSC honored OSSC Fellow, Prof. Alex Small, with an OSSC Lifetime Achievement Award at its September 11, 2024, meeting in recognition for over a decade of exemplary service and dedication to the Optical Society of Southern California and the greater optics community. Alex helped organize some of our finest events, served the OSSC in several offices including President, and has brought more students into the Society than any member in history.
Over a hundred people attended the meeting in person and on-line. Several dozen were there to celebrate and honor Alex. Alex attended the meeting along with a table-full of his close friends and relatives including his wife Adrienne Kelly. Among his guests were his father, and his aunt uncle visiting from Milwaukee. Alex's close friend, Tijana Talisman, brought several copies of a recent paper by Alex titled "A Simple Derivation of the Rayleigh Criterion" published in the September, 2024, issue of The Physics Teacher. Tijana's daughter also attended - a young women Alex tutored since she was in first grade.
Alex's love of teaching and mentoring was also evident by the large number of his students and former students in attendance. Ertan Salik, Alex's close friend, colleague and fellow professor of physics at Cal Poly Pomona, led a tribute to Alex given by his former students including: Forrest Hippensteel, Stefan Forschner, Shawn Love, Steven Dang and McGwire Herbert. The tributes included poetic and heartfelt statements of what Alex meant to them as a teacher and mentor, and how his wisdom and advice benefited their professional lives and careers.
Alex Small is Professor of Physics and Chair, Department of Physics and Astronomy, at Cal Poly Pomona, where he has been teaching and conducting research since 2007. Alex's main area of research is super-resolution microscopy. The primary question that Alex asks is: Given that the diffraction limit has been circumvented, what is the new limit that replaces it? Most of Alex's research is theoretical, drawing upon tools and concepts from quantum optics, statistics, kinetics, image processing, and other fields. Many of the insights from this work lead to work on image processing algorithms, as well as collaborations with people in biological research labs including Tijana Talisman mentioned above.
Alex earned his Bachelor of Science in physics with a minor in economics from the University of Southern California. Among those attending on-line was Prof. Anupam Madhukar, Kenneth T. Norris Professor of Engineering, at the University of Southern California. Alex was a member of Prof. Madhukar's research group while he was an Undergraduate Physics major at USC. Alex later earned his PhD in physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara,
Prior to working at Cal Poly, Alex was a postdoctoral research fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD for two years. Alex's work has been published in numerous journals, including Nature Methods, Optics Letters, Biomedical Optics Express, Optics Express, and Biophysical Journal. In 2014 he received a Distinguished Reviewer Award from OSA for his service as a journal reviewer.
Alex teaches a wide portfolio of courses, including numerous freshman and sophomore courses, an upper-division optics course, computational physics, classical mechanics (his favorite subject, because Lagrangians are so elegant), and biophysics. He has supervised numerous undergraduate research projects, two of which have led to awards from national organizations, and many of which have led to student-coauthored journal articles.
Alex loves his involvement with the OSSC and believes it helps him better connect his teaching with the challenges and opportunities that his students will encounter in industry. Alex stated several times during the September 11 meeting that the OSSC is his favorite Professional Society due to the support it provides members including the many student members.
I've personally know Alex since he was an undergrade at USC when we were both members of Prof. Madhukar's research group. We also both served as alter servers for the USC Catholic Community and on the USC Student Senate. Alex was the President of the Society of Physics Students and I was President of the USC Student Chapter of OSA. As a young man, Alex shared his wisdom and advice navigating USC bureaucracy and taking our leadership positions in stride.
I've watched Alex as his career bloomed over the years exemplified most by his love of mentoring and teaching. Alex is always quick to share his thoughts and feelings including his complaints about the state of secondary mathematics education. He also easily shares his quick wit, philosophical and political views, and has an ability to see several shades of gray in most situations. I've never admired him more than when he received his Lifetime Achievement Award from OSSC.
Alex lives in Pomona with his wife Adrienne and his dog Bernardo. He enjoys writing short stories, especially science fiction; one of his works was featured in Nature. He also loves off-the-wall humor and Milwaukee bratwurst.
This article includes excerpts from the OSSC on-line biography of Alex Small.