Keller's semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM), which she invented in 1992 while working at AT&T Bell Laboratories, provided a practical method to create extremely short, energetic bursts of laser light. Thanks to her developments, lasers can now produce short bursts ranging in duration from picoseconds (10-12 seconds) to femtoseconds (10-15 seconds) and repeating up to several billion times a second.

Ultra-fast Femto-Lasik for eye surgery is able to make tiny incisions with no risk of damaging nearby tissue. Similarly, cancerous tissue can be cut away without searing neighbouring healthy cells. And the technology has opened up numerous machining and material-processing applications that are vital to the automotive and electronics industries.

In her role as a physics professor at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich, Keller has further refined and developed the SESAM concept, widening it to include more types of laser; in addition, she has developed precise scientific measuring equipment that explores the wonders of the universe down to the quantum level.

The Award winners will be announced on 7 June in Paris, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, at a ceremony attended by representatives from the worlds of politics, business, industry, research and intellectual property. The public will select the winner of the Popular Prize by online voting on the EPO's website in the run-up to the ceremony.

European Patent Office - Vote for Ursula Keller