Dr. Robert R. Alfano is a Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering in the Physics Department at the City College of New York (CCNY) and former Director of the Institute for Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Lasers (IUSL) of the City University of New York (CUNY). His research focuses on ultrafast laser science, advancing both fundamental understanding and applications across a broad range of optical science and engineering fields. These include nonlinear optics, notably the discovery of supercontinuum generation, which is widely regarded as a foundational breakthrough that enabled broadband coherent light sources and supported advances later recognized by the Nobel Prize in Physics, such as optical frequency comb metrology and attosecond science. His work also includes self-focusing, four-wave mixing, and cross-phase modulation (XPM).Dr. Alfano is also considered a founding pioneer of optical biopsy and has developed time resolved and spectroscopic techniques for noninvasive tissue diagnosis that helped establish the field of biomedical optics. His research further encompasses time-resolved spectroscopy using pump probe techniques and ultrafast optics.Dr. Alfano has published more than 750 papers, holds 135 patents, and has mentored 61 Ph.D. students. His work has accumulated over 53,000 citations with an h-index of 110 and an i10-index of 705. He earned his Ph.D. from New York University and is a Fellow of APS, IEEE, OSA, and NYAS. His major awards, recognizing his pioneering contributions to ultrafast laser science and biophotonics, include the OSA 2008 Charles Townes Award, the SPIE 2011 Britton Chance Award in Biomedical Optics, the APS 2013 Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, the OSA 2016 Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award, and the 2019 SPIE Gold Medal.Dr Leming Wang began his life’s work in the research in the early 1980s. From 1983 to 1986, Dr Leming Wang was a visiting researcher specified in the multi-layer periodic structures waveguide / antenna in the department of electrical engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of New York and Electromagnetic and Microwave Laboratory of the New York Institute of Technology.Dr. Wang obtained his M.E. at the City College of New York in 1988. In 1995, at City University of New York, he completed the work for a doctorate in Electrical Engineering. His doctoral research focused on optical Kerr gate and parametric amplification techniques used for the imaging in scattering media. In the Institute for Ultrafast Spectroscopy & Lasers (IUSL) in the City College of New York, he continued his post-doctorate research until 2000.In later years, he focused on optimizing the performance of semiconductor lasers. From January 2006 to February 2026, he worked as the senior technical staff in AGx Technologies, where he primarily worked on the coupling and interfacing between RF signal and semiconductor laser for fiber optical applications.Dr. Sandra Mamani earned a dual Bachelor of Science in Physics and Computer Science from Lehman College, City University of New York (CUNY), in 2016. She received her MPhil in 2023 and her PhD in Electrical Engineering in 2024 from City College, CUNY. Her doctoral thesis, defended in July 2024, is titled “Orbital and Spin Angular Momentum in Light Generation, Interactions, Special Photons, and Applications in Liquids, Solids, Vapors, and Biological Tissue Media.”Dr. Mamani has authored or co-authored 13 peer-reviewed journal articles and is a co-inventor on three patents. She served as Vice President of the Optica CCNY Student Chapter from 2021 to 2023. Her honors include the Lawrence & Margaret Hauben Graduate Fellowship (2023, 2024), the Slagowitz Family Scholarship (Alumni Association CCNY Scholarship, 2023), the Corning Scholarship (2020, 2021), the Best Poster Presentation award at the 121st Topical Symposium of the APS New York State Section on Physics of Optical Materials (Corning Museum of Glass, 2019), and the Best Paper Award at Optical Biopsy XXIII: Toward Real-Time Spectroscopic Imaging and Diagnosis (January 2025).In 2025, Dr. Mamani completed her first year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Lasers (IUSL) at CCNY, working under the guidance of Distinguished Professor Robert Alfano, her doctoral advisor. Her research interest focuses on light–matter interactions using structured light with various polarization states and orbital angular momentum (OAM). She studies ultrafast nonlinear optical phenomena, including stimulated Raman scattering, filamentation, supercontinuum generation, and the optical Kerr effect, with and without the use of OAM beams.
