Robert W. Boyd is M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics at the University of Rochester where he is also a professor of physics. His research focuses on nonlinear optical interactions and nonlinear optical properties of materials, as well as the application of nonlinear optics, including quantum and nonlinear optical imaging. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he went on to study with Nobel laureate Charles H. Townes at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1977. Dr. Boyd then joined the faculty of The Institute of Optics at Rochester. He was appointed a full professor in 1987, named to his present chair in 2001, and to the faculty of physics the following year. A fellow of the Optical Society of America and of the American Physical Society, he was recently awarded the Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics. The prize recognizes his breakthroughs in manipulating light, notably, shooting a pulse of light into an optical fiber that departs before it enters and, within the fiber, travels backward and faster than the speed of light thus demonstrating an effect predicted by equations describing the progression of waves. His research was selected by Discover as one of the top one hundred research stories in 2006—and one of only six from physics chosen by the science and technology magazine. In addition to more than 320 papers published in scientific journals, Dr. Boyd is the editor (with M.G. Raymer and L.M. Narducci) of Optical Instablities (1986), (with Govind P. Agrawal) of Contemporary Nonlinear Optics (1992), and, most recently, (with Svetlana G. Lukishova and Y.R. Shen) of Self-Focusing: Past and Present (2009), a critical review of theoretical and experimental investigations of a non-linear optical process induced by change in the speed of light within materials exposed to intense electromagnetic radiation. He is also the author of Radiometry and the Detection of Optical Radiation (1986) and Nonlinear Optics, a highly-praised volume first published by Academic Press in 1992 and last year updated in a new third edition.