The National Science Foundation has awarded the University of Rochester a $1 million Regional Innovation Engines Development Award grant to begin developing the next generation of lasers. Leading the effort will be Thomas Brown, the director of the Institute of Optics, and Jonathan Zuegel, a professor of optics and a distinguished scientist at the Laboratory...Continue Reading

Two scientists at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE)—Valeri Goncharov and Petros Tzeferacos—have received funding awards from the US Department of Energy (DOE) for research in fusion energy. The DOE recently announced the winners of $32 million in funding for 15 projects as part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy’s (ARPA-E) Breakthroughs...Continue Reading

Source: Thomas M. Baer and Christina E. Baer As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the world, patients, technicians and scientists depend on state-of-the-art molecular-analysis instruments as they fight against SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing this disease. Optics and photonics technologies embedded in these instruments—such as high-quantum-efficiency multispectral cameras, visible-light laser diodes and LEDs, infrared bolometer arrays,...Continue Reading

Rochester Institute of Technology researcher leading a three-year study on precision quantum sensing funded by a $550,000 grant from the U.S. Department of the Navy’s Office of Naval Research, officials announced Wednesday. Research underway at RIT advances a new kind of sensing technology that captures data with better precision than currently possible and promises cheaper,...Continue Reading

The ‘sister cities’ of Jena and Rochester (USA) have a lot in common: Here, as there, an optics industry has developed since the 19th century together with suppliers. While in Jena the collaboration between Carl Zeiss and Ernst Abbe significantly furthered optics research, soon after in Rochester, local industrialists George Eastman (Eastman Kodak) and Edward...Continue Reading

The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany was No.1 in the country for research expenditures funded by business in fiscal year 2013. That’s according to a report out last week from the National Science Foundation. The nanocollege received $201.6 million in research and development expenditures from business, a piece of the college’s $374.2...Continue Reading

Telescope lenses someday might come in aerosol cans. Scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory are exploring a new type of space telescope with an aperture made of swarms of particles released from a canister and controlled by a laser. These floating lenses would be larger, cheaper and lighter than...Continue Reading