For nearly five decades, Eustace L. Dereniak has explored the frontiers of optics and engineering to help create 21st century breakthroughs in medicine, military hardware, astronomy and many other fields.

Dereniak will become president of SPIE, the world's largest professional organization dedicated to optics and photonics, in January. He has been a professor in the University of Arizona's College of Optical Sciences since 1979 and is also a professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering.

"The 21st century will be the Photon Century, just as the 20th century was the Century of the Electron," Dereniak said. "The photon is three orders of magnitude faster than the electron, and by harnessing it we are working at the speed of light."