College News

Scholarship recipients and donors came together with Wyant College of Optical Sciences staff and faculty to celebrate the 2023 scholarship awards ceremony, which took place on Sept. 15, 2023.  Dr. Jack Jewell (OSC MS 1981 & PhD 1984) and donor to the Jack Jewell Extreme Optics Graduate Student Research Award and the Jack Lee Jewell Endowed Chair in Optical Sciences, was the program’s keynote speaker. Congratulations to all student awardees!

Welcome back, students! We're glad you're here. The Student Optics Club, SOCk, hosted an amazing (and delicious) BBQ thanks to the support of ASML. Students and college faculty and staff had the opportunity to mingle and enjoy the start of another school year. Welcome back and let's make it the best year yet!

Wyant College is pleased to welcome a new baby boy, born to Anna Willomitzer and Prof. Florian Willomitzer. Baby Carl was born mid-May to the family. Also, Big Brother, Fritz, was thrilled to welcome a new playmate. Congratulations Willomitzer family!

It is with great excitement the Wyant College of Optical Sciences shares the release of a newly created Recruitment Video produced by the brilliant minds of current optics students. Undergraduate students, Logan Pawlowski, Sebastian Magri, Dani Balicki, Evan Brorby, and Max Duque worked to create the video from the ground up.

SPIE has announced the newly elected officials to the SPIE leadership team, which now includes Prof. Daewook Kim, of the Wyant College of Optical Sciences. Prof. Kim was elected as one of four new Society Directors. He will serve a three-year term with SPIE from 2024-2026. Prof. Kim says of the honor, "Thank you for letting me represent you on the SPIE Board of Directors. Let’s work together, take care of each other, and make it happen." Congratulations, Prof. Kim!

Synopsys, a developer of the industrial standard optical design software, CODEV, recently announced the winners of the Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Optical Design Competition 2023. The Wyant College of Optical Sciences undergraduate team, Carolyn Hokin, Shriniketh Sreevatsan, Adam Wan, Yiran Xie and Mina Yoo won the top award. The team, a group of classmates in their senior year at the Wyant College, received an award for their OPTI340 final optical design project, titled “Compact Relay for Image Steering in Augmented Reality."

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.”