Rate My Professor Bahaa Saleh

Bahaa E. A. Saleh is a distinguished professor of optics and photonics at CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, a position he has held since January 2009. He served as dean of CREOL from January 2009 to December 2019. Prior to joining UCF, Saleh was a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University from 1994 to 2008, where he also chaired the department from 1994 to 2007 and served as Deputy Director of the Gordon Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems from 2000 to 2008. Earlier, he was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1977 to 1994, chairing the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1990 to 1994. He held research and faculty positions at institutions including the University of Santa Catarina in Brazil, Kuwait University, Max Planck Institute in Germany, University of California-Berkeley, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Columbia University, University of Vienna. Saleh earned his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Cairo University in 1966 and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1971.

Saleh's research contributions encompass a broad spectrum of topics in optics and photonics, including statistical and quantum optics, optical communication and signal processing, nonlinear optics, photodetectors, image processing, and vision. His current work focuses on the generation and detection of nonclassical light, such as entangled photons, and its applications in quantum imaging and quantum communication. He is the author of more than 600 papers in technical journals and conference proceedings, as well as several books: Photoelectron Statistics (Springer-Verlag, 1978), Fundamentals of Photonics (Wiley, 1991; 2nd edition, 2007, with M. C. Teich), Introduction to Subsurface Imaging (Cambridge University Press, 2011), and Quantum Photonics: Bimodes, Qubits, and Biphotons (Springer Nature, 2025). Saleh has received numerous honors, including SPIE Fellow, IEEE Photonics Society Life Fellow, Optical Society Fellow, Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, C.E.K. Mees Medal (2013), Kuwait Prize (2006), OSA Esther Hoffman Beller Award (1999), OSA Distinguished Service Award (2008), and SPIE BACUS Award (2004). He served as founding editor of Advances in Optics and Photonics, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Optical Society of America A (1991-1997), and chairman of the OSA Board of Editors (1997-2001).