PULLMAN- Tom Dickinson, regents professor of physics at WSU, is honored as one of the 59 new Fellows of the SPIE scientific society. Fellows are members of distinction who have made significant scientific and technical contributions in the multidisciplinary fields of optics, photonics, and imaging. They are honored for their technical achievement, for their service to the general optics community, and to SPIE in particular. More than 600 SPIE members have become Fellows since the Society’s inception in 1955.Dickinson is a worldwide leader in material physics, materials chemistry and surface science. His early work on halogen surface reactions changed the way we think of charge transfer reactions at surfaces. His mechanical interactions studies have focused on the nanometer scale using atomic force microscopy (nanotribology) on the atomic level. An important part of Dickinson’s work, this research shows the major role of surface and near-surface defects in the interaction of lasers with materials, particularly in wide bandgap dielectrics.
His modeling efforts on these combines stimulus-laser experiments successfully fit observed behavior for ion and neutral particle emission, including kinetic energies, laser fluence dependence, and defect density dependence.
Dickinson is a member of many societies and fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS), the America Physical Society (APS), The Materials Research Society (MRS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He has chaired and co-chaired a number of international meetings dealing with fracture, tribology , and laser-material interactions, and has received dozens of awards and honors. His contribution to SPIE, in particular, includes serving as a member of several conference organizing committees and as a session chair.
