Science & Technology

University of Rochester alumnus Josh Cassada ’00 (PhD) has been named one of nine NASA astronauts making up the first U.S. crew in history to journey to space in American-made, commercial spacecraft. Cassada would be the third Rochester alumnus to go to space, joining Jim Pawelczyk ’82 and Ed Gibson ’59.

A new method of opening solid state materials to oxygenation, using metallic oxide clusters, can eliminate guesswork from discovery of new catalysts. The ultimate goal is to more efficiently convert greenhouse gases to useful fuels.

The concept of nothingness is the subject of everything from children’s books to philosophical debate. In the universe, however, is nothing ever possible? How have scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians thought about the concept of nothing throughout history and up to the present?

Liquid metallic hydrogen is not present naturally on Earth and has only been created in a handful of places, including the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics. LLE scientists are researching the properties of liquid metallic hyrdrogen to understand how planets both inside and outside our solar system form magnetic shields.

A University of Rochester research team has devised a much simpler way to measure beams of light—even powerful, superfast pulsed laser beams that require very complicated devices to characterize their properties.

In a letter recently acquired by River Campus Libraries, abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass expresses his pleasure with a bust that can now be reproduced by anyone with a 3D printer.

A University researcher who predicted that laser pulses could generate ultrafast electrical currents in theory now believes he can explain exactly how and why actual experiments to create these currents have succeeded.

Joseph Marron ’86, an alumnus of the Institute of Optics, has more than 20 patents to his credit. But his latest, for a new way to obtain real-time readings from large laser radars, has special significance.

Optical physics and quantum optics will have a profound effect on our daily lives in the decades to come, and two Rochester faculty are among the authors of a new survey of the biggest scientific challenges and questions in the field.

Rochester jumped three spots to number 61 on this year’s top 100 rankings from the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association.

Does the universe contain planets with truly sustainable civilizations? Or does every civilization that may have arisen in the cosmos last only a few centuries before it falls to the climate change it triggers? Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank and his collaborators have developed a mathematical model to illustrate how a technologically advanced population and its planet might develop together, putting climate change in a cosmic context.

Wolf served on the Rochester faculty for more than 50 years and was a leading expert in coherence and polarization of optical fields. His Principles of Optics is the most cited textbook in physics.