OPTICS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Optics at the Institute of Optics
- Research Assistant Professor
Aaron Bauer is an assistant professor of optics at The Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester where he investigates the latest optical design topics. Aaron graduated with a BS in physics from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire and completed his PhD in Optics at the University of Rochester in 2016. In 2020, he received the Optica Kevin P. Thompson Optical Design Innovator Award for his theoretical, creative, and innovative design methods for freeform optics. Aaron holds two US patents and is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed articles and a book chapter on augmented and virtual reality.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Optics / Senior Scientist in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics
Job Titles:
- Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics / Professor of Physics and Astronomy / Professor
Job Titles:
- Member of the DEI Committee
- Professor
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Andrew Berger, professor of optics, arrived in Rochester in July, 2000. He holds physics degrees from Yale (BS, 1991) and MIT (PhD, 1998). At the latter, Dr. Berger did his doctoral work in the G.R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory under the late Michael Feld, developing method to measure glucose and other chemicals' concentrations in blood using laser spectroscopy. Prior to coming to the Institute of Optics, he spent two years developing handheld systems to analyze breast tissue content at the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Center in Irvine, CA, with Bruce Tromberg, thanks to a postdoctoral fellowship from the George E. Hewitt Foundation for Medical Research.
At Rochester, Professor Berger has been recognized with two of the university's college-wide teaching awards, the Goergen Award for Distinguished Achievement and Artistry in Undergraduate Teaching (2007) and the Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2016). He spent the academic year 2013/14 in Jena, Germany, as a guest professor and research alumni fellow at the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technologies and the Abbe Center of Photonics.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant Professor
Interests: Optical design; Freeform optics; AR/VR optics
Job Titles:
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Job Titles:
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Physics
Job Titles:
- Professor of Optical Engineering / Professor
Brian Kruschwitz received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1992, where he developed an interest in optical systems while working on lidar remote sensing of the atmosphere while interning at NASA Langley Research Center. He earned a PhD in optics in 1997 from the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, under the supervision of Professor Thomas Brown, and performed his thesis research on complex-coupled distributed feedback semiconductor lasers. He then spent six years as a senior research scientist at Eastman Kodak Co., where he worked on a diverse array of optical systems ranging from telecine film scanners to Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) devices and laser projection displays, and in the process earned the CTO Patent Award for having 20 U.S. patents issued. Since 2004, Dr. Kruschwitz has been a laser system scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, where he participated in the development, integration, commissioning, and operation of the OMEGA EP laser system. In 2009, he was promoted to senior scientist and became the leader of the OMEGA EP System Science Group, and in 2015 received a secondary appointment to pursue teaching as an associate professor in the Institute of Optics. In 2018, Dr. Kruschwitz assumed leadership of Laser System Science for both the 60-beam OMEGA laser and the petawatt-class OMEGA EP laser system.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Senior Scientist and Group Leader, Laser Technology Development at LLE
Job Titles:
- Research Chair at the University of Ottawa
Job Titles:
- Research Associate / UR Center Coordinator, NSF I / UCRC Center for Freeform
Interests: Computed Imaging; Spectroscopy; Coherence Theory
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Associate / Quantum Nanophotonics Group
Job Titles:
- Professor in the Institute of Optics at University of Rochester
- Professor of Optics / Senior Scientist in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics
Chunlei Guo is a professor in The Institute of Optics at University of Rochester. His research is in the area of femtosecond laser-matter interactions at high intensities. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from University of Connecticut in 1999, and was later named one of the University's 40 Under 40 Outstanding Alumni. His postdoctoral training was at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where his work was awarded the Postdoctoral Publication Prize in Experimental Sciences. He joined the faculty of University of Rochester in 2001. His research at Rochester led to the discoveries of a range of highly functionalized surfaces, such as the black and colored metals, and superhydrophilic and superhydrophobic surfaces, which promise technological applications and have been covered extensively by the media (read more). He is an elected Fellow for American Physical Society and Optica.
Job Titles:
- Undergraduate Program Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Postdoctoral Associate / Quantum Nanophotonics Group
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Associate Professor
Dale Buralli received his BS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983 and his PhD in optics from the University of Rochester in 1991. His PhD research was centered on the design of optical systems containing diffractive optical elements. From 1991 until 2000, he was employed by Sinclair Optics. At Sinclair, he was one of the principal developers of the OSLO® series of optical design software programs. His primary responsibilities included the development and implementation of algorithms for optical system design and analysis, including ray-tracing, geometric and diffraction-based image quality assessment, optimization of optical systems, Gaussian beam propagation, polarization analysis, and tolerancing. From 2000 until 2002, he was a senior scientist at Corning Rochester Photonics Corporation where his duties included optical modeling, performance analysis, and tolerancing for various photonic components and systems, such as 2D and 3D optical switches and cross-connects. Since January 2003, Dr. Buralli has served as chief scientist at Apollo Optical Systems, Inc. (www.apollooptical.com). At Apollo, he is responsible for the design and optical modeling of a wide variety of optical systems, with particular emphasis on virtual/augmented reality, imaging optics utilizing polymer components, and devices for therapeutic vision correction. Since the fall of 2002, he has been an adjunct associate professor at the University of Rochester, teaching a required graduate course in geometrical optics.
Job Titles:
- Member of the DEI Committee
- DEI Committee Chair and William G. Allyn Professor of Medical
- Director, Center for Visual Science
Job Titles:
- Graduate Program Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Member of the DEI Committee
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Associate Professor
- Member of the DEI Committee
Dr. Jaime Cardenas earned his PhD from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in Optical Science and Engineering. His research was in single air interface bends and waveguide microcantilevers. After two years as a process engineer, and three years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Cornell Nanophotonics group, Jaime continued with the Lipson Nanophotonics Group as a research scientist at Columbia University in June 2015.
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Optics
Govind P. Agrawal received the MS and PhD degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, in 1971 and 1974 respectively. After holding positions at the École Polytechnique, Paris; City University of New York, New York; and AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, he joined the University of Rochester in January 1989, where he is currently the James C. Wyant Professor of Optics. Dr. Agrawal is a Life fellow of IEEE, a Distinguished Fellow of Optical Society of India, and a Fellow of the Optica. He has served on the editorial boards of many journals devoted to optics and was the Editor-in-Chief of the Optica journal Advances in Optics and Photonics from January 2014 to December 2019. He chaired the Optica Publication Council in 2009 and 2010 and was also on the Optica Board of Directors during that period. Professor Agrawal received the IEEE Photonics Society's prestigious Quantum Electronics Award in 2012. He was the recipient of 2013 William H. Riker University Award for Graduate Teaching. Dr. Agrawal was awarded the Esther Hoffman Beller Medal of the Optical Society in 2015. He was the recipient of two major awards in 2019-Max Born Award of the Optical Society and Quantum Electronics Prize of the European Physics Society. Professor Agrawal received in 2020 the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Hajim School of Engineering.
Job Titles:
- Andrew Carnegie Professor of Physics / Professor of Physics and Astronomy / Professor
Interests: theoretical atomic; molecular and optical physics
Job Titles:
- Professor of Imaging Sciences, Emeritus
Georg's passion for lens design, optical system analysis, and metrology is reflected in his more than thirty-five-year career in technical optics. His extensive practical and theoretical expertise spans the spectrum from precision lens design, to photonics, to high volume manufacture of consumer opto-electronics. Georg has been an adjunct professor at the University of Rochester teaching Lens Design since 2019. He received his degrees in optical engineering from the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics in 1985 and 1987.
Georg is a Senior Lens Designer at Moondog Optics, Inc. where he provides design and consulting services for customers in the mobile devices, cinematography, virtual reality, and bio-tech spaces. Prior to Moondog, Georg was Principal Optical Engineer at Melles Griot/CVI Laser/IDEX Corporation. There he was responsible for all aspects of optical engineering, supporting product development of custom OEM diffraction-limited optical assemblies and electro-optical modules for Semiconductor, Bio-medical/life sciences, and Machine Vision markets. From 1990 to 2001 Georg held positions at Rochester Photonics Corporation, Bausch & Lomb, and Leica, where he worked in such diverse fields as developing diffractive optical elements, diamond turned optics, visual systems and eyewear, and the early stages of autonomous vehicles with automotive laser rangefinders for intelligent cruise control systems. Georg started his career at Gradient Lens Corporation as an optical designer.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Assistant Professor
Job Titles:
- Professor of Optics / Senior Scientist in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Chemistry
Jake Bromage received a Physics BSc from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland in 1991 where he focused on optics and lasers. He received a PhD in Optics from the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester in 1999 for his work on "Creating Rydberg Electron Wave Packets Using Terahertz Pulses" under the supervision of Profs. Stroud and Walmsley. After graduating, he joined Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff, working on Raman fiber amplifiers for long-haul transmission and he continued research in this field after the group was transferred to Optical Fiber Solutions. In 2004, he returned to the University of Rochester as a Scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), to join the team building the petawatt-class OMEGA EP laser. He was promoted to Senior Scientist in 2008 and Group Leader for the Laser Technology Development group in 2014. In 2015, he received a secondary position as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Optics.
Job Titles:
- Professorship in Ophthalmology / Director of Research, Department of Ophthalmology
Jennifer D. T. Kruschwitz received her BS and MS in Optics from the University of Rochester in 1989 and 1995 respectively. She earned her PhD degree from Rochester Institute of Technology in Color Science in 2015. Her dissertation was entitled Specialized Color Targets for Spectral Reflection Reconstruction of Magnified Images. She has worked as an optical coating engineer her entire career and worked for Itek Optical Systems, the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics, and Bausch & Lomb. In 1998, she started her own consulting company, JK Consulting, and over the past three decades she has been the lead coating designer for products such as Electronic Theatre Control's Source Four PAR MCM, Steris' Harmony examination lighting, the IMAX Laser Cinema Projector, and Perriquest's Laser Blocking Eyewear for airline pilots. She is also currently the technical sales support for OptiLayer Software for North and South America, the Middle East, and Australia. She has been teaching at the Institute since 2007, and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona since 2011. Dr. Kruschwitz holds five patents, two patents pending, and has authored articles in over twenty publications or proceedings in the areas of optical interference coatings and color. In 2012 she was awarded Digital Rochester's Technology Woman of the Year for her innovations in optics and her support of women entering and succeeding in this high technology field. Dr. Kruschwitz published her first book, A Field Guide to Colorimetry and Fundamental Color Modeling, through SPIE Press in 2018. She is a Senior Member of Optica, where she is currently on the Advisory Board for Optics and Photonics News, held a position on the Board of Directors from 2004-5, President of the Rochester Local Section in 2007, and Technical Committee Member for the Optical Interference Coating Topical Meeting since 1997. She is also a 4 th Degree Black Belt in taekwondo with Kukkiwon World Taekwondo Headquarters in Korea.
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Assistant Professor
Jessica DeGroote Nelson is the Senior Director of Strategic Optical Innovations at Edmund Optics (EO). At EO she is responsible for corporate strategy related to optical components and associated coating technologies. Prior to joining EO, Jessica was the Director of Technology and Strategy at Optimax from 2007 to 2022. She joined Optimax after graduating from the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester with a BS, MS, and PhD in Optics. She furthered her education with an Executive MBA from the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester in 2013.
Jessica is active in the technical community as a fellow member of SPIE and a senior member of Optica (formally OSA) as well as a member of the Optics and Electro-Optics Standards Council (OEOSC). Optics education is a strong passion for Jessica, and she currently leads the educational outreach activities for Optica-Rochester Section Optics Suitcase program and chairs the SPIE Education and Outreach committee. In addition to The Institute of Optics, Jessica also teaches a course on Managing Technology, Innovation, and Research at the Saunders School of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as part of their Executive MBA program.
John Bowen received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981 and his PhD in Optics from the University of Rochester in 1991. His PhD research was on the design and measurement of optical systems containing gradient index microlenses. From 1991 to 1995 John was employed at Rochester Photonics Corporation, where he developed manufacturing processes for diffractive optics. He has held positions at Spectra-Physics as a Manufacturing Engineer, at Alcon Laboratories as a Senior Scientist responsible for new ophthalmic surgical products, and at Eastman Kodak in optical process development and metrology. Since 2000 John has been a principal and senior engineer at Photon Gear in Ontario, NY. Photon Gear designs and builds high precision optical assemblies to support the semiconductor, biomedical, and metrology industries. John's responsibilities include optical modeling, design, and analysis, and support of manufacturing and testing. His teaching interests are centered on optical systems design, encompassing optical, mechanical, and electrical aspects.
John R. Marciante received the BS degree in engineering physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1991 and the MS and PhD degrees, both in optics, from the University of Rochester, in 1992 and 1997, respectively. In 1991, he joined the USAF Phillips Laboratory in New Mexico (later to become the Air Force Research Laboratory) as a research physicist. In 2001, he returned to Rochester to join Corning Rochester Photonics Corporation as a senior research scientist and the Institute of Optics as an adjunct professor. Since 2003, he has been with the University of Rochester. He is currently an associate professor of optics at the Institute of Optics. He has also held positions as adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico and chairman for the IEEE/LEOS Albuquerque Chapter, and has served on numerous conference committees including OFC, SPIE Photonics West, and Frontiers in Optics. He served two terms as topical editor for the Journal of Optica, and two terms as the chair for the Fiber Modeling and Fabrication technical group of Optica.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Optics and Mechanical Engineering
- Professor
Jonathan D. Ellis earned his PhD in mechanical engineering from the Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) in 2010. Prior to that, Jon studied at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he received both his MSc and BS, also in mechanical engineering. Jon currently has a joint appointment as an assistant professor at the University of Rochester with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and The Institute of Optics.
Professor Ellis' research theme is building novel instruments which enhance metrology capabilities and are used to improve manufacturing processes. He is also interested in system integration for metrology tools onto existing precision systems or designing scratch-built systems for custom applications. Current research projects are in designing and developing smart optical sensors for compact, remote displacement sensing and for multi-DOF interferometry. In addition to those, he is also interested in linear displacement interferometry, high power gas laser frequency stabilization, refractometry, flexure systems, stage metrology, precision machine design, and capacitance sensor design.
Josh Cobb has been designing, building, and testing optical systems for over 30 years and has been a power user of Light Tools for over 20 years. He worked at IBM in Poughkeepsie, NY where he was trained in Lens Design by Fred Herring. At IBM he designed and built optical systems for the semi-conductor manufacturing lines and was the co-founder of IBM Optical Development Services. World-wide customers were from many industries which included: medical manufacturing, semi-conductor manufacturing, defense and aerospace, and producers of manufacturing equipment.
He next went to the Eastman Kodak Research Labs where he designed and built systems for many different Kodak businesses. These included laser thermal printers, scanners, digital projections systems and was the inventor and developer of the Monocentric Optical technology in all of Kodak's stereoscopic displays.
He is currently working at Corning Tropel in Fairport, NY where he has designed systems that include photovoltaic concentrators, maskless lithography systems, augmented reality systems, and lithographic illuminators.
Josh has also been an adjunct professor at Monroe Community College since 2008. There he developed a course on Optical Instrumentation and Testing (OPT 151) and worked with a colleague to develop 22 labs for two courses. These labs included all new equipment which was acquired through grants from Corning and Sydor.
He holds a BS and MS in Optics from the University of Rochester and is the inventor of 67 issued US patents. He is also the co-author of Light Action! Amazing Experiments with Optics a classic children's book which has been in print for 25 years.
Job Titles:
- Member of the DEI Committee
- Professor
Julie Bentley received her BS degree in optics from the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester in 1990. She also received her PhD from the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester. Her PhD thesis focused on the integration of the design and manufacture of gradient-index optical systems. After graduating she spent two years at Hughes Aircraft Co. in California designing optical systems for the defense industry and twelve years at Corning Tropel Corporation in Fairport, New York, designing and manufacturing precision optical assemblies such as micro lithographic inspection systems. She started teaching at the University of Rochester in 1998. Her main teaching interests include geometrical optics, optical design, and tolerancing.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Physics / Professor of Visual Sciences
Job Titles:
- Research Engineer / Wicks Group
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Senior Scientist, LLE
Job Titles:
- Professor of Physics / Professor of Physics and Astronomy
Job Titles:
- Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Professor
Job Titles:
- Member of the DEI Committee
- Administrator of the Institute
Job Titles:
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Optics
Interests: Lasers; Waveguides; Fiber Optics; Ultrafast
Job Titles:
- Nicholas George Endowed Professor in Optics / Professor of Optics and Ophthalmology / Professor in the Center for Visual Science
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Teaching Professor
- Professor
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Institute of Optics in 2023 As an Assistant Professor
Michele Cotrufo joined the Institute of Optics in 2023 as an assistant professor. He received a BS degree in physics from University of Bari, Italy (2010) and MS degree in physics from University of Padova, Italy (2012). He then joined the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) as a doctoral student, where he investigated novel light-matter interactions in nanophotonics and hybrid optomechanical systems. After graduating in 2017, he performed postdoctoral research at the University of Texas at Austin and at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (New York City). In 2023, he was awarded the Photonics Young Investigator Award from MDPI.
Job Titles:
- Engineer
- Professor of Optics / Senior Scientist in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics
Miguel A. Alonso received the degree of Engineer in Physics from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City and the PhD degree in Optics from The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester. In 2003, he joined the faculty of The Institute of Optics. He has been Associate Editor and Deputy Editor for Optics Express, Chair of Spotlight on Optics, Associate Editor for Optica, and currently serves as Editor in Chief of Optics Letters. He is a Fellow of Optica.
Job Titles:
- Dean 's Professor of Dermatology / Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Job Titles:
- Rudolf and Hilda Kingslake Professor in Optical Engineering Science / Professor of Optics / Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Job Titles:
- Marketing, Communications, and Outreach Manager
Job Titles:
- Emeritus Professor
- Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Electronic Imaging
- Nicholas George Endowed Professor in Optics / Professor of Optics and Ophthalmology / Professor in the Center for Visual Science
Nicholas George is the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Electronic Imaging, a professor of optics, and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rochester. He was the founding director of the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems, funded in part by the National Science Foundation under the S/IUCRC program, and also of the highly rated ARO-URI Center for Opto-Electronic Systems Research. Prior to this, he was director of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester for more than four years. Previously he was a professor of applied physics and electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He received the BS degree with highest honors from the University of California at Berkeley, the MS degree in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland, and the PhD degree in electrical engineering and physics from the California Institute of Technology.
P. Scott Carney served as the director of The Institute of Optics, from 2017-2021. He holds a PhD in Physics (1999) from the University of Rochester and a bachelor's degree in Engineering Physics (1994) from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was faculty at ECE Illinois 2001-2017. Scott has a strong commitment to teaching excellence. He is active in the optics community primarily through Optica as a journal editor and meeting organizer. He is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Diagnostic Photonics, Inc.
Job Titles:
- Member of the DEI Committee
- Grant Writer for Diversity Initiatives
Prof. Benjamin L. Miller completed his undergraduate studies at Miami University (Ohio), receiving degrees in Chemistry (BS), Mathematics (AB), and German (AB) in 1988. He next moved to Stanford University, where he carried out his PhD research in chemistry under the direction of Paul Wender. Following a stint as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard in Stuart Schreiber's laboratory, he joined the University of Rochester faculty in 1996. His group's expertise in molecular recognition, combinatorial chemistry, nanotechnology, and optical sensing has been applied to the development of novel optical biosensor platforms and synthetic compounds targeting several human diseases. He is currently Professor of Dermatology, Biochemistry and Biophysics, Biomedical Engineering, and Optics. As an entrepreneur, Miller is a founder of Adarza BioSystems, Inc., a multiplex optical biodetection company located in Rochester, NY and St. Louis, MO. He is also the Academic Lead for the Integrated Photonic Sensors working group in AIM Photonics.
Job Titles:
- Research Associate / Vamivakas Group
Job Titles:
- Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Professor
Qiang Lin received his BS and MS in Applied Physics from Tsinghua University, China, in 1996 and 1999, respectively, and received his PhD from Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, in 2006. He was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Applied Physics at Caltech from 2007 to 2010. In 2011, he joined the faculty of electrical and computer engineering and the faculty of optics, as an assistant professor.
Job Titles:
- Member of the DEI Committee
Job Titles:
- Executive Administrative Assistant
Job Titles:
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Physics
Professor Boyd was born in Buffalo, NY. He received the BS degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 1977 received the PhD degree in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. His PhD thesis work was supervised by Professor Charles Townes and involves the use of nonlinear optical techniques for infrared detection. Professor Boyd joined the faculty of the Institute of Optics of the University of Rochester in 1977 and is presently Professor of Optics and Professor of Physics.
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Job Titles:
- Administrator of the Institute
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Assistant Professor
Job Titles:
- Nicholas George Endowed Professor in Optics / Professor of Optics and Ophthalmology / Professor in the Center for Visual Science
Job Titles:
- Adjunct Professor
- Group Leader
- Professor
Professor Svetlana G. Lukishova was born in Moscow. She received her BS/MS (with honors) and PhD degrees (1977) from the General and Applied Physics Department of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (FizTech) working at the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). Her senior project on theoretical astrophysics was made at a Nobel Prize winner V.L. Ginzburg's theory department. Her PhD thesis was supervised by P.P. Pashinin and Nobel Prize winner A.M. Prokhorov and involved spatial beam-profile and temporal pulse-shape control in laser-fusion systems. After holding research positions at the I.V. Kurchatov Nuclear Power Institute, Troitsk branch TRINITI (Moscow Region), the Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics of the RAS (Moscow), and the Liquid Crystal Institute (Kent, OH), she joined the University of Rochester in 1999. In Russia she was awarded the International Science (G. Soros) Foundation a Long-Term Grant, the Russian Government and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research Grants for her work on nonlinear optics of liquid crystals. In addition to her research, she supervised and taught students at FizTech and served for the Soviet/Russian Committee of the International Scientific Radio Union URSI. She served at the Optica Award committees (C.E.K. Mees Medal and Max Born Award). She also served 6 years as a Topical/Associate editor of Optics Letters on nanophotonics, liquid crystals and nonlinear optics.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Distinguished Teaching Professor
- Professor
Thomas G. Brown has been on the faculty of the Institute of Optics since July of 1987, has held the rank of full professor since 2008 and is currently the director of the Institute of Optics and a Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor. Professor Brown is a Fellow of Optica and SPIE, is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Modern Optics, and serves as chair of the annual multidimensional microscopy conference (Photonics West). He was the founding director of the Robert E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design and Engineering, the architect of the optical engineering curriculum at the Institute of Optics, served as a program co-chair for the centennial program of Optica, and is former president and honorary member of the Rochester Local Chapter of Optica. He was foundational in establishing the plans for the Test, Assembly and Packaging program within AIM Photonics and currently serves and the academic co-lead for Test, Assembly and Packaging within AIM Photonics.
Professor Brown began his work in optics and optoelectronics in 1978 as an optical fiber systems designer at GTE Laboratories. While there, he wrote the systems modeling software which was used to design the first live-traffic 1.3 µm optical fiber telephone link. Since that time, he has had consultancies and technical collaboration with companies such as Qualcomm, IBM, Corning Inc., ABB Kent-Taylor, Amp, Rockwell, Rochester Gas and Electric, and Emerson Corporation, along with several law firms and many of the Industrial Associates of the Institute of Optics. His doctoral dissertation, carried out at the Institute of Optics under the supervision of Professor Dennis Hall, was in the area of silicon-based optoelectronics/photonics with particular emphasis on mechanisms for extrinsic light emission in silicon. Since joining the Institute faculty in 1987, Professor Brown has taught on both the graduate and undergraduate levels, established an undergraduate honors research program, and for ten years served as undergraduate chair. During that period he established the Hopkins Center for Optical Design and Engineering, a program whose charter was to provide advanced laboratory support for a new optical engineering curriculum at the Institute.
While at Rochester, he has conducted research in detectors and optical communications, semiconductor optoelectronics, optical fiber microstructures, optical polarization, and optical metrology. His early research focused on frequency-stable semiconductor laser design and silicon-based waveguide technology, including the first experimental observation of all-optical switching in a nonlinear Bragg reflector. Professor Brown's recent research activities have included: 1) Focusing and coherence properties of polarization vortex beams; 2) Stress-engineered optical elements; 3) Polarization properties of nanostructures; 4) Waveguide mode resonances in SOI waveguides. The work on polarization vortices has been applied to semiconductor lithography and inspection, and single molecule imaging [PRL 86, 5251 (2001)]. Professor Brown and colleagues introduced the idea of a full Poincare beam, a fully correlated beam that contains every possible polarization state. His most cited work was published in 2000 (Optics Express) in which he coined the term ‘Cylindrical Vector Beam' in analyzing the tight focusing properties of Radial and Azimuthally polarized beams. The paper was recently named in the top ten (#6) most cited papers on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Optics Express.
In 2017 he received a Goergen award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. His professional affiliations have included Optica, SPIE, the Materials Research Society, and the American Physical Society. He has served as referee for numerous professional journals, and has served on the Technical Program Committee for the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, Photonics West, Optics and Photonics (the annual meeting of SPIE), Opto-Northeast, and Frontiers in Optics (the annual meeting of Optica). He has authored over 95 publications, 10 patents, 3 book chapters, was an editor for the four-volume Optics Encyclopedia, and served as co-contributor of articles entitled Light and Polarized Light for the 2008 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia.
Professor Brown is frequently asked to provide expert consulting in a wide range of areas in optical systems, photonics, and the application of light based technologies to a wide range of manufacturing applications, including emerging areas of photonics.
Job Titles:
- Emeritus Professor of Optics / Provost Emeritus
Timothy Baran received his BS in electrical and computer and systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2007. He came to the University of Rochester in 2007 and received his PhD in optics in 2013. Following this, Dr. Baran joined the faculty as an instructor in the Department of Imaging Sciences in 2013. He was promoted to research assistant professor in 2015, and joined the tenure-track faculty as an assistant professor in 2020.
Job Titles:
- Graduate Program Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Director of the Advanced Photonics Research Department
- Fellow and Life Member of the American Physical Society
- Fellow of Optica
- Professor of Optics / Professor of Physics / Professor of Visual Sciences
- Research Overview
Wayne H. Knox was born in Rochester in 1957. He received the BS degree from the Institute of Optics in 1979 and the PhD degree from the Institute of Optics in 1984. He went to Bell Laboratories as a postdoctoral member of technical staff in 1984, and was promoted to member of technical staff in 1985. In 1993, he was promoted to distinguished member of technical staff, and in 1997 to director of the Advanced Photonics Research Department. In 2001, he returned to the Institute of Optics in the position of director and professor of optics. He has chaired many international scientific meetings such as the Ultrafast Phenomena Meeting, CLEO, Optica Annual Meeting, Ultrafast Electronics and Optoelectronics, and the Quantum Optoelectronics Topical Meeting, among many others. Professor Knox is a fellow of Optica and fellow and Life Member of the American Physical Society. He received the 1990 Initiatives in Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences, and the 1999 American Association of Physics Teachers Richtmyer Award. Professor Knox lives in Pittsford, NY with his wife and five of their six children.
Interests: Molecular Beam Epitaxy; Semiconductor Optoelectronics
Job Titles:
- Professor of Medical Optics / Professor
Job Titles:
- Member of the DEI Committee