Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of New Orleans, is Fellow of OSA, SPIE, and TWAS: Academy of Sciences of the Developing World (Trieste, Italy). Dr. Azzam received SPIE’s 2005 G.G. Stokes Award for exceptional contributions to polarization optics. He served as topical editor of both Applied Optics and Journal of the Optical Society of America A, and former Guest Editor of special issues of Journal of the Optical Society of America A, Optical Engineering, Surface Science, and Vol. 27 of SPIE's Milestone Series Selected Papers on Ellipsometry. Azzam was Co-Organizer, Co-Chairman, and proceedings Co-Editor of several conferences on ellipsometry, polarized light, and optical polarimetry. Previously recognized as an Outstanding American Inventor by Intellectual Property Owners, Inc.; for his four detector photopolarimeter. This invention, which led to the commercial development of the StokesMeter® by Gaertner Scientific, received a Photonics Circle of Excellence Award and one of the R&D 100 Awards. Dr. Azzam was Fulbright Scholar and Visiting Professor at Université de Provence (France). He holds five US patents and is Author/Co-author of three book chapters and over 300 papers. His monograph Ellipsometry and Polarized Light (published by North-Holland) was translated into Chinese and Russian.

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