Institute of Optics

Lenses and mirrors with freeform rather than symmetric can lead to optical devices that are more effective than ever before. A new design method would eliminate the expensive trail-and-error needed to work with freeform optics.

Rochester researchers have been using lasers to change the properties of metals in incredible ways. But to make the technology commercially viable, a partnership between scholars and business will focus on making the lasers much more powerful.

Teegarden joined the Institute of Optics in 1954 and served as its director from 1981 until 1987. He was also the first director of the University’s Materials Science program, and led the New York State Center for Advanced Optical Technology.

While existing technology for detecting bruises works well for light-skinned victims, it’s less effective for people of color. An interdisciplinary team at the University of Rochester has set out to change that.

Rochester researchers have created particles with negative mass in an atomically thin semiconductor, using a device that creates an optical microcavity.

Two University faculty members—William Jones of the Department of Chemistry and Xi-Cheng Zhang of the Institute of Optics—have received prestigious Humboldt Research Awards.

As a teenager, Wayne Knox ’79, ’84 (PhD) “sometimes filled the house with smoke” while building short wave radios and other electronic gadgets from scratch. Now the optics professor is among this year's NAI fellows.

Chunlei Guo, with the Institute of Optics, and Kirsi Jarvinen-Seppo, with the Department of Pediatrics, were recently awarded separate $1.5 million grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest Gates Foundation grants ever awarded in the University’s history.

What if biopsies could be performed noninvasively as part of the initial procedure, so surgeons would know immediately whether additional cancerous tissue needed to be removed?

Spring forward. Fall back. On two Sundays each year, as we move in and out of Daylight Saving Time, time itself suddenly starts to seem a little arbitrary. Every discipline in the University has its own way of constructing and thinking about time.