The Laser & Plasma Laboratory is celebrating its 36th anniversary this year. In the two decades since its formation in 1990, just four years after the creation of CREOL, then called the Center for Research in Electro-Optics and Lasers, LPL has grown to be a major laboratory within the constellation of optics, photonics and laser laboratories, and centers surrounding the College of Optics & Photonics at UCF. LPL is a founding laboratory within the new Townes Laser Institute, established in 2007 as a State Center of Excellence in next-generation laser technologies and their applications.