Gérard Mourou, director of ILE (Institut de la Lumière Extrême), has been selected to receive the Charles Hard Townes Award of the Optical Society of America (OSA). This honor is presented to recognize contributions to quantum electronics. Prof. Mourou is being honoured for groundbreaking applications of high-intensity lasers to precision micromachining, eye surgery and relativistic light-matter interactions. This award will be presented on June 3 at CLEO/IQEC 2009 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.