News Release

Contact: Chris McManes
Senior Public Relations Coordinator
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IEEE-USA President to be Inducted into
New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame

WASHINGTON (10 June 2005) — IEEE-USA President Dr. Gerard A. Alphonse of Princeton, N.J., will be inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame on 23 June.

An IEEE Fellow who holds more than 50 U.S. patents. Alphonse is being honored for his "prolific work in diverse cutting-edge technologies, including superconductivity, acoustic emissions and electro-optics." Former inductees include Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.

"I never dreamed of joining the ranks of such prestigious inductees," Alphonse said. "I feel both proud and humbled to receive such a great honor and mark of distinction, with my name joining those of famous inventors."

Alphonse invented and demonstrated the world's highest performance superluminescent diode in 1986. The device is a broadband semiconductor light source and key component of next-generation fiber optic gyroscopes, low coherence tomography for medical imaging, and external cavity tunable
lasers with applications to fiber optic communications.

Alphonse is a founder and senior vice president of advanced technologies for Medeikon Corp., an optical technology developer for medical diagnostics and therapy in Ewing, N.J. The company is currently developing a new product for the cardiac diagnostics industry to assist in the treatment of
coronary artery disease.

Alphonse and three others were selected for the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame by the New Jersey Research and Development Council, a nonprofit association dedicated to creating a strong, healthy environment for the continued growth of R&D within the state. The council also recognizes inventors, innovators and graduate students.

The honorees will be recognized at a luncheon at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, N.J., on Thursday 23 June at noon. For information on past award winners, go to www.njinvent.org.

(Photo of Dr. Alphonse available upon request)

IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of the IEEE. It was created in 1973 to advance the public good and promote the careers and public policy interests of the more than 220,000 technology professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to www.ieeeusa.org.

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Last Update:  15 May 2007
Staff Contact: Pender M. McCarter, p.mccarter@ieee.org