College News

In celebration of Black History Month, Feb. 1 - Mar. 1, we recognize, Dr. Khalid Omer, Visiting Research Scientist at Meta Reality Labs. Khalid is also an alumnus of the Wyant College and graduated with his B.S., 2018 and Ph.D., 2022. Among his scholarship honors while a student at the University of Arizona, Khalid was awarded Dean's Fund for Excellence Scholarship (2017-18) and the Arthur G. and Beatrice DeBell Memorial Graduate Student Scholarship in Optical Sciences (2018-19).

Another amazing Prism Week took place Feb. 6 - 10. The week-long diversity and inclusion event for the Optical Science & Engineering Community at the University of Arizona put on by the Women In Optics. During the week insightful and engaging events were held including allyship panels, a diversity town hall, a movie screening of "Picture a Scientist," and a special lunch & learn with guest speaker Anjani Polit.Many students, staff, and faculty supported the event to make it another success. Thank you to all for investing in the week to make it another success! And an extra thank you to all who attended as special guests of the week.

Every year the Optica Foundation and the previous year's Optics Ambassadors select ten new exceptional early-career members to serve as that year's class of Optics Ambassadors. This year's class includes Wyant College alumnus, Ben Cromey, now an optical engineer for Ball Aerospace. Congratulations, Ben on this amazing honor and opportunity!

On July 16th, 2022 Prof. Florian Willomitzer presented one of his research projects at TEDxNuremberg. The talk is now published on the TEDx Talks Youtube channel. In the talk, Florian shared more insights on his holographic cameras, which can see around corners and through scattering media, and “make the unseen visible.” The technique has multiple potential applications, e.g., in medical imaging, autonomous driving, industrial inspection, or virtual reality.