Institute of Optics names director

Knox

ayne H. Knox, a 1979 graduate of the University and former director of the Advanced Photonics Research Department at Lucent Technologies, begins work today as the new director of the Institute of Optics, one of the world's leading optics research centers.

Knox, who also earned his doctorate from the University in 1984, brings two decades of laser research at Bell Laboratories to the institute.

"We're very excited to have Wayne Knox as a faculty member and as the director of the Institute of Optics," said Thomas LeBlanc, professor of computer science and Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the College Faculty. "Dr. Knox is known for both his path-breaking research and his outstanding leadership skills. Given the importance of optical technology, both locally and nationally, and the distinguished history of the institute, it is imperative that the University remain at the very forefront of this discipline. This appointment assures our continued leadership role in optics and photonics."

Founded in 1929, the Institute of Optics is the nation's oldest program of higher education in the field of optics. It remains one of the centers of optics research, bolstered by the proximity to Corning, Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb and Welch Allyn.

"There are a lot of challenges ahead for anyone in the optics industry," Knox said. "We're going to have to understand what it is that makes Rochester unique in the optics world, and use that knowledge to bridge the gaps between optics and fields such as biotechnology."

At Lucent Technologies, a communications research company spun off from AT&T in 1996, Knox pioneered the use of lasers that fire in a millionth of a billionth of a second for fiber optic communication.

In 1984, Knox joined Bell Labs, where he worked his way up from postdoctoral fellow to director of a group of 22 research scientists. Just a year after starting there, Knox made the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest laser shot ever recorded.

He went on to invent ways to make such lasers more practical for industry and patented a way to pack more information into an optical data stream than had ever been done before.

Knox is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Physical Society as well as a recipient of a National Academy of Science award for his laser work. In 1999, he won the American Association of Physics Teachers' Richtmyer Award for Physics Teaching.

Knox will join his father, Robert S. Knox, professor emeritus of physics, on the University faculty. The elder Knox, who also earned his doctorate in optics at the Institute of Optics, is a senior scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

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