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Leaving his home in Romania wasn’t something Gabriel Popescu, Ph.D ’02, ever expected to do until the opportunity presented itself. Motivated by the chance to make an impact on the world, Popescu packed his bags and left home in 1997 to pursue an American education at the CREOL, College of Optics and Photonics. It’s been…

  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…

Frank J. Effenberger ’95PhD is considered a world expert in the field of fiber access networks and passive optical networks. In 2008, he became the chairman of International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations’ specialized agency for information and communication technologies. In 2011, he was named as Huawei Fellow, and, in 2015, he was named as…

Michael Mielke, PhD, ’00, ’03 received the UCF Professional Achievement Award at the Black & Gold Gala 2014 on October 23, 2014. Since earning his PhD from CREOL in 2003 Michael has had a distinguished career. He helped found Raydiance, the leading provider of industrial grade ultrafast laser solutions. As the principal architect of the…

Tiejun (TJ) Xia,’94PhD received the UCF 2013 Professional Achievement Award for the College of Optics and Photonics. The award was presented at the UCF Alumni Association’s annual Black and Gold Gala on November 7, 2013. Dr. Xia received his PhD from CREOL in 1994 and had a distinguished career in optical communication. In 2007, at…

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…

Félicie Albert ’04 was named the 2022 CREOL Alumna of the Year. Dr. Albert received her master’s degree in Optics from UCF, where she worked in Craig Siders’ group. Prior to attending CREOL, she earned her bachelor’s degree in engineering from the École Nationale Supérieure de Physique de Marseille. After completing her master’s degree, she…

Jason Eichenholz ’95MS ’98PhD received the 2012 Professional Achievement Award for the College of Optics and Photonics at UCF’s Alumni Association’s annual Black & Gold Gala on November 1, 2012. He also received the College’s Distinguished Alumni Award and was honored at the Banquet of the CREOL@25 Symposium on March 15, 2012. Eichenholz, who now…

Richard DeSalvo, Ph.D. ‘93, takes wireless communications further into the future every day, but it’s the people of his past that inspire his every step — beginning with Neil Armstrong. DeSalvo credits the 1969 moon landing and his mother for steering him toward the sciences in general, but it would take years of starts and…

Observation of Topological Flat-Band States in Photonic Lattices We report the observation of topological flat-band states in photonic lattices fabricated using femtosecond laser writing. Topological photonic lattices are optical structures that remain insulating in the bulk while supporting robust, unidirectional edge states immune to backscattering. By embedding a flat-band within the topological bandgap, we introduce…