A 5 year high-power fiber laser development program worth $5,870,793 has just been awarded to UCF by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) in Washington. Richardson was in Washington DC at the time of the award, serving as a senior science advisor to the State Department under a Jefferson Science Fellowship from the National Academy of Sciences. The award is made for the development of new concepts for high power fiber lasers, and links for the first time, the Townes Laser Institute programs on fiber lasers and optical fiber development with similar programs at the University of Southampton in the UK and at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Co-PI’s on the program were Professors Lawrence Shah, Rodrigo Amezcua-Correa and Axel Schulzgen from the College of Optics & Photonics, Professors Sir David Payne and Johan Nilsson from Southampton and Professors Jens Limpert and Andreas Tünnermann from Jena. This is the one of the largest awards for high power laser development made to a single U.S. university by AFOSR. The same agency awarded an $870,400 DURIP major equipment grant to the UCF team last year for the purchase of a new MCVD lathe for advanced fiber fabrication. These investments go a long way towards establishing UCF as a leading academic institution for the development of high power fiber lasers.
See UCF Today: Air Force Awards $5.87 Million Laser-Research Contract to UCF
