Professor Andrew Forbes

Prof Andrew Forbes has at various times in his career found himself as teacher, janitor, secretary, receptionist, webmaster, systems engineer, sales rep, manager, director, and sometimes a scientist. Andrew is presently a Distinguished Professor within the School of Physics at the U. Witwatersrand (South Africa) where in 2015 he established a new laboratory for Structured Light. Prof Forbes is active in promoting photonics in Africa, a founding member of the Photonics Initiative of South Africa and Director of South Africa’s Quantum Roadmap. He is a Fellow of SPIE, Optica, the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP), and an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He holds four honorary professorships, is editorin- chief of the IoP’s Journal of Optics and sits on the editorial board of five other international journals.

He has won several awards, including the NSTF national award for his contributions to photonics in South Africa, the Georg Forster prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for outstanding contributions to photonics, the SAIP Gold Medal, the highest award for physics in South Africa, making him the youngest winner to date, the Sang Soo Lee award from Optica and the Korean Optical Society and the TWAS Prize for Physics. Prof Forbes spends his time having fun with the taxpayers’ money, exploring structured light in lasers as well as classical and quantum optics.