Institute of Optics

For their capstone project, a senior design team has built a demonstration model for museum audiences of the Nobel Prize-winning laser technology developed by Rochester alumna Donna Strickland ’89 (PhD).

They create novel devices and develop new technologies with global impact. The University of Rochester ranks fourth among US universities in its percentage of international patent holders who are women. What brought these women to the University—and what enables them to thrive?

Jannick Rolland, director of the Center of Freeform Optics, has 35 patents to her name and is listed among the top women pioneers in augmented and virtual reality.

Rochester researchers are trapping nanoparticle-sized silica beads in an “optical tweezer” in a series of experiments that could shed new light on the fundamental properties of lasers.

Three teams of Rochester graduates and current students have reached the regional finals of the world's largest social entrepreneurship competition.

In addition to their Nobel noteworthiness, Rochester researchers continue to develop new ways to apply lasers in research, medicine, and everyday life in 2018. Because frankly, we’re big on lasers.

The associate professor of optics holds 63 U.S. and 151 foreign patents and his inventions have helped protect the integrity of the ballot box, preserve great works of art, and assess the damage mobile screens do to our eyes.

Today's Rochester researchers are taking science developed at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics to develop the next generation high-power lasers and to better understand the fundamentals of high-energy-density physics. 

Three scholars with ties to the University of Rochester received the Nobel Prize in their fields at the 2018 ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to both Donna Strickland ’89 (PhD) and her graduate advisor and former senior scientist Gérard Mourou, for work that paved the way for more compact and precise high-intensity laser systems. In addition, Paul Romer, a former assistant professor in the Department of Economics, has been awarded a shared Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in endogenous growth theory.

Kara Bren of the Department of Chemistry and Robert Boyd of the Institute of Optics are being recognized for their “efforts toward advancing scientific applications that are deemed scientifically or socially distinguished.”