Clifford Pollock is a professor of computer and electrical engineering, Cornell University. He was an NRC/NBS postdoctoral Fellow at the National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, CO where he participated in the development of a frequency chain that led to the adoption of a new international standard for the meter. He joined the Faculty at Cornell in 1983, where he has served multiple terms as Director of Electrical and Computer Engineering and currently teaches undergraduate computer and electrical engineering courses. In addition, Pollock maintains a research group of 3-4 graduate students, and is actively pursuing new solid state lasers for the infrared, and high power femtosecond pulse generation.
Pollock’s major research focus has been in tunable lasers, generation of ultrashort optical pulses, and the design of optical waveguide devices. He and his team developed a number of broadly tunable near infrared lasers based on color centers and on Chromium-doped materials, explored new materials such as composite optical lasers, and developed methods for using the large bandwidth of these lasers to make femtosecond pulses. Current research is directed at femtosecond-duration pulses of tunable radiation, novel infrared laser sources, and LED lighting.
