Bahaa Saleh, distinguished professor and former dean at the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL), is known for his highly regarded books as well as for his outstanding leadership in optics and photonics education. His textbooks — including 2011’s Introduction to Subsurface Imaging, 2013’s Photoelectron Statistics: With Applications to Spectroscopy and Optical Communications, and 2025’s Quantum Photonics: Bimodes, Qubits, and Biphotons — have been adopted by more than 100 academic programs worldwide and are top-rated resource material for the industry. His academic success is equally recognized: As chair of the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1990–1994) and Boston University (BU) (1994–2007), Saleh enhanced the optics and photonics curricula, implementing new courses and laboratories, promoting faculty recruitment, and attracting new students. At BU, he played a pivotal role in establishing the university’s Photonics Center, which remains an interdisciplinary hub for education, research, and industry collaboration. From 2000 to 2008, as deputy director of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems, Saleh advanced education in image science and engineering across multiple partner institutions — BU, Northeastern University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez — while also fostering industry partnerships. In his role as CREOL dean from 2009 to 2019, he led the college through a period of significant growth, launching a new undergraduate degree program in optics and photonics and making major advancements in CREOL’s endowments, including two in partnership with SPIE: the SPIE-Glebov Family Optics and Photonics Graduate Scholarship Fund, and the Soileau Family-SPIE Optics and Photonics Undergraduate Scholarship Fund for students who are the first in their family to attend college.
An SPIE Fellow Member since 2010, Saleh has been a strong supporter of CREOL’s SPIE Student Chapter as well as facilitating the participation of the college’s students at SPIE Photonics West. In 2022, he contributed a section, “On Hyperlinked Teaching and Learning,” to the 2022 SPIE Press publication Field Guide to Optics Education: A Tribute to John Greivenkamp. In 2004, Saleh was honored with the SPIE BACUS award for his contribution to photomask technology.
“Throughout his career, Professor Saleh has published leading educational and research textbooks which have been used worldwide in optics graduate courses,” notes former SPIE Board Member and former President of the International Commission for Optics Chris Dainty. “While he is most well-known for Fundamentals of Photonics, authored with Malvin Carl Teich, I would like to draw attention to Bahaa’s first book, Photoelectron Statistics, published in 1977. This is a truly amazing book, full of didactic elements that have made it a "bible" for those working in that field — including me! I needed to understand what a doubly stochastic Poisson point process was, and in Bahaa’s book this is explained not in a page or two, but in the excruciating detail that is mandatory for a proper understanding. This is the true meaning of education: details, details, details! His other major contribution has been through his leadership at university departments. Bahaa has dedicated his whole career to teaching, providing an inspiring role model for both students and faculty, and he has remarkably high standards: for Bahaa, true understanding takes hard work and dedication, as exemplified by him.”
