DRreceived his Ph.D. degree from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and later the highest degree of Doctor of Sciences from the Institute of General Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR by the decision of the Scientific Council led by the Nobel Prize winner, academician A.M. Prokhorov. According to the Statute of the Doctor of Sciences degree, this highest degree is awarded only to the most outstanding Ph.D. scientists who founded a new research field of a great interest. Oks worked in Moscow (USSR) as the head of a research unit at the Center for Studying Surfaces and Vacuum, then – at the Ruhr University in Bochum (Germany) as an invited professor, and for the last 30 years – at the Physics Department of the Auburn University (USA) as Professor. He conducted different research studies in the areas of atomic and molecular physics, astrophysics, plasma physics, laser physics, and nonlinear dynamics. He founded/co-founded and developed new research fields, such as intra-Stark spectroscopy (new class of nonlinear optical phenomena in plasmas), masing without inversion (advanced schemes for generating/amplifying coherent microwave radiation), and quantum chaos (nonlinear dynamics in the microscopic world). He also developed a large number of advanced spectroscopic methods for diagnosing various laboratory and astrophysical plasmas – the methods that were then used and are used by many experimental groups around the world.

Prof. Doug White is an associate professor and teaches introductory calculus-based physics in the Department of Chemistry and Physics at the University of South Carolina Aiken. His research background is in the laboratory astrophysics/astrochemistry, particularly with infrared absorption spectroscopy. He received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He completed the postdoctoral fellowship at NASA Ames Research Center, followed by a visiting professorship at Jacksonville State University in Alabama.