Dean Thomas L. Koch to Retire After 13 Years of Tremendous Growth and Advances at Wyant College of Optical Sciences

Dean Thomas L. Koch has recently shared with Provost Ron Marx and President Suresh Garimella his decision to retire on June 30, 2025, the end of the current fiscal year, noting that he will soon be turning seventy and having more time for family has become a priority.

Koch added, “At that point I will have been the longest serving dean or director of OSC and it is healthy for the college to refresh itself with new leadership. Together we charted a great journey and have enjoyed tremendous growth over the past 13 years as we witness the continuing explosion of applications and demand for new optics and photonics technologies. Our faculty has grown by 35%, with more than half of our faculty newly hired since I joined in January of 2012 and more hires are yet to come. While we still have a long way to go, I am also proud that we have made some progress in diversity in the process, doubling the number of women T/TE faculty in the college.”

Provost Ron Marx said, “Dean Koch has led the Wyant College of Optical Sciences with outstanding leadership and unwavering dedication. He has been a champion of one of our unique strengths in science and engineering here at the University of Arizona. We are deeply grateful for his service.”

Growth in the college under Koch’s term as dean has broadened the scope of research and education into exciting new directions. These include fundamental physics exploring the limits of inertial sensing using atom optics and quantum optomechanics, a strong footprint in quantum information science and engineering with the CQN ERC, novel nanophotonic materials and devices, new initiatives in sensors and instrumentation for space, biomedical optics, and leading work in novel computational imaging, sensing and display technologies. This growth in scope has complemented the college’s historical and foundational strengths in optical engineering, including the continued vitality of OSC’s large optics and novel optical fabrication programs, and has resulted in an extremely healthy breadth and diversity of faculty research success.

This growth has also fueled successes in the college’s educational mission. The expanding extramural research has enabled the admission of a record 48 new PhD students this year, more than double the average number admitted in 2012. In addition to expanded MS enrollments, this year also benefited from inspired outreach from OSC’s own students that helped to double the size of the entering undergraduate cohort. The health of the Industrial Affiliates program is also a continuing testament to OSC’s industry relevance and the high demand for the students the college graduates. 

In addition to leveraging success in research, this growth has been made possible by valuable partnerships across the entire stakeholder community. Support from the university has included the new Grand Challenges Research Building connected to the Meinel complex with three floors of dedicated and fully occupied OSC labs and offices, in addition to the CQN ERC floor and shared meeting room space on the ground floor.

College growth benefited enormously from the largest endowed scholarship campaign and the largest endowed chair faculty campaign in the history of UA. Under the leadership of our executive director for development Kaye Rowan, these campaigns provided endowed scholarships for 30 new first-year PhD students and enabled the expansion of our faculty with 15 new Endowed Chair positions.

Koch notes, “A prominent foundation for these philanthropic campaigns was the huge $32M investment from my predecessor Jim Wyant and his family with their tremendously inspiring and generous matching gift offers. With the support of hundreds of matched or outright gifts, this raised our college endowment to more than $50M to support our faculty and students. We were very pleased to be able to recognize Jim in 2019 by naming the college the James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences.”

“In addition to participating in this exciting growth, I have personally enjoyed keeping OSC connected with the external community by serving on review boards for SNL, JPL, NRL, ARL, playing a leadership role in the creation and management of AIM Photonics, serving on the board of the new UA-ARC, and also being able to pursue some of my own research interests as PI on grants and contracts that have benefited our faculty and students,” Koch added.

“I feel privileged to serve and be part of such a wonderfully talented and creative community, and I am highly confident that OSC will continue to thrive and have tremendous impact in Lighting the Future!”