Posts Tagged Institute of Optics

Pedro Vallejo-Ramirez ’16 is the first Rochester senior to be selected for a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, one of the most highly regarded international academic scholarship programs. The optical engineering major plans to pursue a master’s degree in biotechnology at Cambridge University.

David R. Williams, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on human vision and pioneer in the use of adaptive optics technologies for vision applications, serves as the William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics, director of the Center for Visual Science, and dean for research in Arts, Science & Engineering.

The Nicholas George Endowed Professorship in Optics will honor the professor emeritus and former director of the Institute of Optics. The professorship was established by a gift from George’s former student Milton Chang, with an additional commitment from Joseph W. Goodman, the William Ayer Professor Emeritus at Stanford University

Nick Vamivakas, assistant professor of optics, thinks his team’s work will make extremely sensitive instruments for sensing tiny forces and torques possible, and could also lead to a way to physically create larger-scale quantum systems known as macroscopic Schrödinger Cat states.

David Williams, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on human vision, received the $500,000 prize for his transformative breakthroughs in vision research and adaptive optics.

Until now, optically active quantum dots have not been observed in materials consisting of a single layer of atom, also known as 2D materials. Rochester researchers have shown how the 2D material tungsten diselenide can be fashioned into an atomically thin semiconductor that serves as a platform for solid-state quantum dots.

Researchers in the Institute of Optics have shown that a microplasma created by focusing intense laser pulses in air emits not only visible light, but also electromagnetic pulses at terahertz frequencies that can be used to detect complex molecules, such as explosives and drugs.

Twenty-five years ago today, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched. The images it has been sending back to Earth for all these years have become iconic, and yet it came very close to being a billion dollar failure. One of the heroes who rescued Hubble from ruin and made it a great science success story is Rochester optics professor Duncan Moore.

Rochester researchers and their collaborators have developed a way to transfer 2.05 bits per photon by using “twisted light.” The new approach doubles the 1 bit per photon that is possible with current systems that rely on light polarization and could help increase the efficiency of quantum cryptography systems.

A collaboration between researchers from Canada, Europe, and Rochester has experimentally produced Möbius strips from the polarization of light, confirming a theoretical prediction that it is possible for light’s electromagnetic field to assume this peculiar shape.