July 10, 2017

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

I am very pleased to welcome Scott Carney, our new director of The Institute of Optics. Scott joins us from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was a professor of electrical and computer engineering and interim director of the Innovation, Leadership, and Engineering Entrepreneurship Degree Program. This is a homecoming of sorts for Scott, who earned his PhD in physics at Rochester studying with Emil Wolf, the leading expert in coherence and polarization of optical fields. Scott’s doctoral work enabled him to become well acquainted with The Institute. So even as he brings a fresh perspective, Scott is well aware of the Institute’s culture and history, and is eager to help bring it to the next level. He is eminently well qualified to do so, with impressive credentials as a researcher, educator, and entrepreneur (read more here). Welcome aboard, Scott.

Thanks to Govind Agrawal, professor of optics, who led the search committee, and to Duncan Moore, Jannick Rolland and Nick Vamivakas of the Institute, Nicholas Bigelow of physics, and Jonathan Zuegel of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, who also served on the committee.

And special thanks to Xi-Cheng Zhang for the fantastic job he’s done the last five years as Institute director. During his tenure, the Institute increased undergraduate and masters enrollments, established student exchanges and partnerships with overseas universities, increased the number of endowed professorships and of scholarships and prizes for graduate students, doubled the number of Industrial Associates, and turned budget deficits into surpluses. The Institute is in a good place, thanks in large part to X.-C., who will remain on the faculty, continuing his pioneering work in terahertz waves.

Twenty-six high school students were introduced to optics at the annual Photon Camp that recently wrapped up at the Institute. The students worked on projects covering solar energy, illumination/fluorescence, cellphone versus digital/SLR, optical communications, thermal imaging, and lithography. Special thanks to Institute undergrads Dylan Beckman ’19, Greg Lier ’20, Noah Pines ’20, Savannah Byron ’20, Kai Williams ’18, Quinn Kaufman ’20, and Sabrina Villanueva ’19 who advised the students. Once again, Nick Vamivakas, associate professor of quantum optics and quantum physics, Per Adamson, director and coordinator of the teaching labs, and Daniel Smith, undergraduate program manager, were indispensable in organizing and operating the camp. Thanks also to James Mitchell, technical associate at URNano, for his assistance. In addition many people gave talks, including faculty members Thomas Brown, Julie Bentley,  Miguel Alonso, Wayne Knox, Jaime Cardenas, and Brian McIntyre, technical associate Michael Pomerantz, PhD students Katelynn Sharma and Aaron Michalko, and Nicholas Kochan ’17, who will join the PhD program this fall, all of the Institute; David Berg, owner of Oren Sage Technology; and scientists Tanya Kosc, James Oliver, and Terrance Kessler from the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Dan reports that several of the visiting students expressed an interest in returning here to study optics as a result of their visit.

Congratulations to Jiebo Luo, professor of computer science, who has received funding from the National Science Foundation to collaborate with GuoJun Qi and Wei Wang at the University of Central Florida on developing computer vision and pattern recognition technologies to automatically analyze and recognize sentiments and emotions from multimedia materials and social media content posted and shared by veterans. The project will also explore methods of visual sentiment editing to reduce violence from multimedia materials and social media. The goal is to reduce violence from multimedia materials for children, and negative psychological impacts from social media for veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman