News

Pegasus Professor Martin Richardson, Ph.D., was recently admitted as a fellow of the Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS), one of only a handful of academics to do so. Richardson, a CREOL professor of optics and founding director of the Townes Laser Institute, was chosen for his “longstanding commitment to directed energy through globally recognized academic…

The power of spectroscopy is proving a gamechanger for identifying pollutants in nature and building a career for Ty Olmstead, Ph.D., ’11. Olmstead was first hired at Ocean Insight five years ago as an application scientist with a Ph.D from CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics, supporting the endeavor. He was recently promoted to…

BY ALLISON HURTADO ’12 The Founders’ Day Awards celebrate the outstanding academic achievements of our faculty members and students. As we recognize these achievements, we remember the efforts of those women and men who made this university a reality, and we prepare for the accomplishments of the future. In an extraordinary time, our faculty and…

A highly regarded name in the field of optics was recruited a year ago to CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics, for his expertise in multiple areas of research. Yehuda Braiman, Ph.D., brings more than 20 years experience as a distinguished research and development scientist at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, along with a…

A broad vision for scientific progress and the growing experience to bring that vision to life recently earned Ricardo Bustos-Ramirez the honor of CREOL’s 2021 Student of the Year. The Ph.D. candidate’s research focuses on chip-scale optical frequency combs. Potential applications include LIDAR measurements and the search for exoplanets. Bustos-Ramirez has co-authored and published over…

Thousands of people are seeing more clearly thanks in part to the vision of Vadim Smirnov,’02 MS, whose research group played an integral role in the development of lasers that revolutionized cataract surgery. Local optical component manufacturer OptiGrate Corp was approached by a medical laser company more than 10 years ago with a request to…

Brian Lawrence ’97PhD sees problems as opportunities. A self-described “experimentalist at heart,” Lawrence ran into plenty of problems in seventh grade when he built a power supply to power a donated HeNe laser tube to explore his curiosity about lasers. Those problems became learning opportunities that led him to eventually assemble more powerful ruby crystal…

Globally recognized optical and infrared materials scientist Clara Rivero-Baleine, Ph.D., has dedicated her life to the field of optics. In celebration of her many contributions to the field, CREOL, the UCF College of Optics and Photonics, named Rivero-Baleine the recipient of 2019’s Distinguished Alumni Award. “I am honored to be recognized by an institution that…

Ricardo Bustos Ramirez Chip-scale optical to RF link via harmonic injection locking Due to their highly stable timing characteristics, optical frequency combs have become instrumental in applications ranging from spectroscopy to ultra-wideband optical interconnects, high-speed signal processing, and exoplanet search. Furthermore, optical frequency combs serve as the main gear to create the most precise time-keeping…

When Peter Delfyett first fell in love with science during elementary school, he imagined he would grow up to be a paleontologist. Instead, the Pegasus Professor of optics and photonics has spent his career developing futuristic technology. From lasers that are used to cut Gorilla Glass for Samsung phones to fiber-optic cable technology that allows the internet…

The history and tradition of excellence at CREOL, College of Optics and Photonics, is detailed at length in a new publication from Information Display, the official magazine of the Society for Information Display. The article appears in the January/February edition, and charts CREOL’s origins in the 1980s as former Florida Gov. Bob Graham’s vision for…

A faculty member and an alumnus are among the newest class of fellows named by the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). The honor goes to Professor Axel Schülzgen, Ph.D., who studies and specializes in fiber optics. He is already a fellow in the Optical Society of America; his awards at UCF include the…