As part of the regular OSA (Optical Society of America) elections Dr. Wilhelm Kaenders, Co-Founder and President of TOPTICA Photonics AG, was elected by the more than 15.000 members to serve on the “OSA Board of Directors”. In the years 2009 - 2012 he will help the Society to evolve to the best needs of its clientel in particular try to bring in the interest of the international parts.

The OSA is the largest representation of fundamentally and technology oriented scientists and engineers within the optical technologies. Starting from an American centered membership, the society has evolved over time to a global organisation representing today more than 40 % non-US members. The OSA ist called home of many fundamentally oriented German scientists and is publisher of the peer-reviewed journals like Appl. Optics, Optics Letters, Optics Express, JOSA A/B, etc. In addition to the annual “Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO)” and the “Optical Fiber Communications Conference (OFC)”, many smaller scientific meetings are organized by OSA worldwide.
As an example of the increasing global positioning OSA will present in cooperation with the German Physical Society (DPG) the newly created annual “Herbert-Walther-Preis” during CLEO Europe / LASER 2009 in June 2009 in Munich for the first time.