Tom Carruthers Email & Phone Number

I've left the National Science Foundation, having retired as an Expert Scientist and, before that, as a Program Director in NSF's Physics Division. Currently I conduct research in ultrafast laser physics and in precision optical metrology as well as in fiberoptic communications. As a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Maryland–Baltimore County, I collaborate with researchers there and elsewhere in the design of stable fiber lasers and mode-locked lasers in general and on time and frequency transfer techniques, and I also provide counseling for graduate students. I am available for other consulting positions in program management as well as in laser optics, telecommunications, and precision optical metrology.At NSF I oversaw the operation of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and the construction of its major upgrade, Advanced LIGO. (LIGO is major facility at the forefront of physics observing gravitational-wave radiation, distortions in the fabric of space-time, predicted by Einstein to be generated by violent events in the distant universe such as the collisions of black holes or neutron stars.) I also served on NSF's IT Security, Ethics Education, Broadening Participation, Energy Efficiency, and Climate Change Working Groups.I am a Senior Member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), an international body of some 1300 professionals that determines the scientific program of LIGO and assists in its operation and development.I've also been active in Optical Society of America service, having chaired the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the Frontiers in Optics conferences and having sat on the conference steering committee.

Listed skills include Optics, Physics, Sensors, Nonlinear Optics, and 46 others.