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).

Juergen Czarske

Light has the potential to recognize the origins of diseases, enabling to prevent them, or to cure them early and gently. The early diagnosis is the key to improve the survival rate and cure rate of patients. However, conventional biopsy often takes several hours to a few days for the surgeon to know the results of the diagnosis. Optical histopathology offers real-time intraoperative diagnosis without tissue removal. Novel optical engineering approaches for minimally invasive fiber endoscopy using fluorescence light are presented.

Gordon Wetzstein

In this talk, we explore hybrid optical-digital strategies to computational imaging that outsource parts of the algorithm into the optical domain. Using such a co-design of optics and image processing, we can design application-domain-specific cameras or compute parts of a convolutional neural network in optics.

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!