Alexander Gaeta, the David M. Rickey Professor of Applied Physics and of Materials Science and Professor of Electrical Engineering, is the recipient of the 2019 Charles Hard Townes Award from The Optical Society (OSA). Gaeta is recognized for seminal contributions to chip-based nonlinear photonics, nonlinear optics in photonic crystal fibers and nonlinear propagation of ultrashort laser pulses. “Technologies emerging from basic research in quantum and nonlinear photonics can be traced in many instances to the achievements of Alexander Gaeta,” said 2019 OSA President Ursula Gibson. “For more than 2 decades, his discoveries and inventions have been a driving force in the quantum revolution unfolding from advances in optics and photonics.”