SPIE Biography for Stuart Kingsley

• OSETI III Paper 2 - Optical SETI Observatories in the New Millennium: A Review

Stuart A. Kingsley was born in Stoke Newington, London, England on May 15, 1948, and lived most of his life in South Tottenham, London.  He attended Markfield Secondary Modern and Tottenham County schools, the latter located close to London's famous Tottenham Hotspurs football grounds.  It was in the fall of 1972 that Stuart first got to hear and meet Sir Arthur C. Clarke, on the occasion of the inaugural meeting in Wood Green, London, of the Astronomical Society of Haringey (ASH).  Stuart received a B.Sc. Honors and Ph.D. in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from The City University, London, England, and University College London (UCL), England, in 1972 and 1984, respectively.  During his thin sandwich course at The City University, he worked for Thorn Electrical Industries at Southbury Road, Enfield, Middlesex.  His Ph.D. thesis advisor at UCL was Professor, Sir D.E.N. Davies, who went on to become head of the electrical engineering department at UCL, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Loughborough and then the Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Ministry of Defense (MOD).  Sir D.E.N. Davies was also IEE President in 1995/1996.

Stuart arrived in the states in 1981, and went to work for Battelle Columbus Division as a Principal Research Scientist, becoming a Senior Research Scientist in 1985.  He left Battelle in 1987 and established his own photonics consultancy business Fiberdyne Optoelectronics.  Since 1992 he has been the VP for Engineering at SRICO, Inc., which produces a variety of electric-field, voltage and optical intensity modulators based on integrated optic Mach-Zehnder interferometers.  SRICO is also developing ultra-wideband, high dynamic range analog fiber optic communication links. Two such products are shown below.  The wideband traveling-wave optical intensity modulator is of great utility for the sort of large microwave interferometer arrays (mini-Cyclops) being presently considered by the microwave SETI community.  Stuart is also the Director of The Columbus Optical SETI Observatory.  Presently, it is his income from his day job with SRICO Inc. which funds all his optical SETI activities reported on this Web site.

Stuart has been involved in producing a variety of fiber-optic sensors, including fiber-optic rotation sensors (gyroscopes).  He won the Barlow Prize while a research student at UCL.  Stuart invented the fiber-optic line-stretcher and fiber-optic line-squeezer phase modulators that are now important components in fiber-optic sensing systems.   In 1984, he shared the prestigious Rank Prize for Optoelectronics with Professor, Sir D.E.N. Davies, for their pioneering work on fiber-optic sensing and coherent fiber-optic data highways.  Stuart is the author of over 50 papers, mainly in coherent fiber-optic systems, the so-called fiberdyne effect or modal noise phenomena in fibers and distributed fiber-optic sensing, and he also has several patents.

During the early 80's, Stuart arranged SPIE's (The International Society for Optical Engineering) first conference sessions on the then emerging field of distributed fiber optic sensing, which after a few years had grown to a size to warrant its own dedicated conference.  Interestingly, his alma mater, The City University, is now substantially involved in this area of work.  In the 90's, he arranged and chaired two international SPIE conferences on Optical SETI and is presently planning a third conference to be held in 2001.  As VP of Engineering for SRICO, Inc., he is involved in the design and development of novel integrated optic wideband electric field and voltage sensing devices.  In 1996, SRICO was awarded the prestigious R&D 100 Award by R&D Magazine for a new photonic electric-field sensor product, for which Stuart Kingsley was one of the inventors.   Stuart is a member of the IEE, a British Chartered Engineer, a senior member of IEEE, a member of Eta Kappa Nu, and belongs to various space interest groups.  Stuart is a volunteer with the Ohio State University SETI Group and had been a U.S. citizen since 1995.  Dr. Kingsley is a former editorial board member for SETIQuest (which recently stopped publication) and he is presently a board member of the Laser Museum & Space Signal Observatory (LSSO).

Other professional interests of his include the possible adverse health effects of electromagnetic pollution, and the adverse effects of fluorescent lighting/VDT flicker.   Presently, he is revisiting, promoting and pioneering the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in the Optical Spectrum, where he brings to the subject his considerable expertise in photonics.  Stuart is constructing a prototype Visible Optical SETI Observatory whose aim is to detect ultra-fast pulsed and monochromatic continuous wave laser beacon signals emanating from star systems within a few hundred light years of earth.  In the summer of 1998 his persistence was vindicated by the SETI Institute and The Planetary Society announcing the start of their own OSETI programs after years of opposing the optical approach to SETI.  In February 1999, Stuart assumed the chair of The SETI League's new Optical SETI Committee.  In March 2000,  he was presented with the Giordano Bruno Memorial Award for his pioneering efforts in the search for laser signals from space.  At the time of this writing, Dr. Kingsley is in the process of launching an associated e-commerce web site, where optical SETI enthusiasts, both professional scientists and amateurs, may purchase specialized hardware and software to undertake the various forms of optical SETI research.

June 26, 2000