Professor Gérard Mourou，a French pioneer in the field of lasers and electrical engineering, inventor of CPA technique, was awarded Einstein Professor of Chinese Academy of Sciences during his visit to Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIOM, CAS) from March, 28 to April,7, 2011.

During the visit, Professor Mourou held a seminar at SIOM. He delivered a speech on “The Extreme Light Infrastructure: Missions and Challenges”, emphatically introduced the latest research progress about ELI and the trend in development of relative fields. Besides, he had an extensive discussion with research staff at SIOM. Afterwards, Professor Mourou visited respective laboratories.

Professor Gérard Mourou is Director of the Laboratoire d’ Optique Appliquée at Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Technique Avancée and Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique (France). He pioneered the field of ultrafast lasers and their applications in scientific, engineering and medical disciplines. His research accomplishments include the creation of the ultrahigh-intensity fields, advances in relativistic nonlinear optics, generation of terahertz radiation, development of picosecond high-power switching and picosecond electron diffraction. In the area of applications he pioneered the field of sub-wavelength machining and with medical colleagues the field of femtosecond ophthalmology. Worth mentioning is the invention of CPA technique, which not only made the further development of ultrahigh-intensity fields possible, but also laid a solid foundation of relativistic nonlinear optics, the new branch of optics. Professor Gérard Mourou is still active in the front line of scientific research at present.