College News

In demonstration of his research ability, recent alumnus, Joseph Cox, PhD; was awarded a SMART SEED Grant. This grant is awarded to a subset of PhD SMART Scholars and awards research grants up to $100,000 per year for a maximum of three years to SMART scholars who are transitioning from their PhD programs into DoD civilian researchers.

Wyant College PhD student, Jay Kueny, facilitated a group project as part of the Warrior Scholars Project (WSP), July 24-28. During the project, Jay said, "I introduced the basic principles of interferometry and helped the students build their own interferometer setups in the junior teaching lab. Many fringes were seen and counted this week. The veteran participants kept saying how much they were looking forward to lab time each day, and I felt that by the end, they truly understood the basic concepts behind interferometry! A couple of them also mentioned how they are now interested in studying optics!"

The Wyant College of Optical Sciences is pleased to welcome three new faculty hires for Fall 2023, and one new faculty hire for Spring 2024. Wyant College of Optical Sciences Dean and Professor Thomas L. Koch welcomed the new faculty saying, “We are thrilled to have Dr. ElKabbash, Dr. Seyler, Dr. Soh and Dr. Sinha joining us at Wyant College of Optical Sciences. These extraordinary individuals will bring exciting new dimensions to our research program and curriculum, providing new opportunities and insights to both our students and external stakeholders.”

Congratulations to Joshua Follansbee on his selection to receive the Dr. Jack Slater Award funded by the Joint Directed Energy Transition Office (JDETO). The $10,000 award is granted annually to the highest scoring student focusing their research efforts on high energy lasers (HEL). Joshua is advised by Prof. Ron Driggers.

University College Cork in collaboration with Wyant College of Optical Sciences recently completed the Cork Summer School 2023: Extreme Nonlinear Optics in Solids. The school took place at University College Cork, Ireland from Aug. 13 - 18, 2023. The Cork Summer School was formally dedicated in memory of Prof. Stephan W. Koch.

Congratulations to Prof. Judy Su on her recognition as an Arizona Champion. Prof. Su will be recognized at the upcoming NAU vs. UArizona President's Tailgae and football game. Additionally, Prof. Su was recently featured by the Office for Research, Innovation & Impact's series, "Conversations with Women of Impact". Congratulations, Prof. Su!

Congratulations to PhD student, Gabe Richardson, for receiving the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) Fellowship. Gabe was selected for his project, "Toward Universal Quantum Optimal Photonic Processing Using Quantum Computation." Gabe is advised by Prof. Saikat Guha, Director of the NSF-ERC Center for Quantum Networks. 

We are pleased to welcome Isabella Briant as a new Wyant College accountant. Find Isabella in Meinel 619 or call her up at 520-626-0432 to say hi!

Congratulations to Prof. Hong Hua who was recently inducted into the 2023 IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Community  (VGTC) Virtual Reality Academy. Hua was selected for pioneering research on optical display technologies for AR and VR, and collaborative AR and VR environments. 

Prof. Judy Su’s work into FLOWER (frequency locked optical whispering evanescent resonator) is unlocking new possibilities for early detection of ovarian cancer before symptoms have even presented—meaning that many women can begin to receive treatment before the cancer has become severe. In Su’s recent paper, “An Integrated Approach to Protein Discovery and Detection From Complex Biofluids” Prof. Su discusses how the technology can sample items from the vaginal environment (a tampon, even) to detect proximal sources for tumor detection.