Racking Up Recognition in Hawaii

Ah, summer. Classes may cease and the halls may empty, but OSC's students certainly don't slow down — not even on trips to the tropics!

The Optical Society (OSA) held its inaugural Classical Optics congress in Kohala Coast, Hawaii, last month, and a slew of graduate students were summarily honored:

• Tzu-Yu Wu won Best Student Paper at the International Optical Design Conference;
• Alejandro Maldonado won second place for his paper at the Optical Fabrication and Testing meeting; and 
• Laura Coyle won third place for her paper, also at OF&T.

Brian Wheelwright was also presented the 2014 Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship Award in a collocated ceremony.

Attendance for Alex and Laura, along with Margaret Dominguez and Run Huang, was supported by OF&T travel grants. Attendance for Tamer Elhazary and Stacey Sueoka was supported by Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Student Travel Grants.

Our alumni and faculty were well-represented, as well: Patrick Llull, B.S. in OSE 2012, was awarded second place for his student paper at the Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging meeting, and Kevin P. Thompson, Ph.D. 1980, gave one of the congress's plenary talks, “Will Computational Imaging Change Lens Design?”

Meeting chairs included assistant professor of optical sciences and electrical and computer engineering Amit Ashok (COSI); assistant research professor Dae Wook Kim, Ph.D. 2009 (OF&T); Scott Lerner, Ph.D. 2000 (IODC); John Rogers, Ph.D. 1983 (IODC);  and Jannick Roland, Ph.D. 1990 (OF&T).

Sponsors included Industrial Affiliates program members Edmund Optics, Optimax Systems Inc. and Synopsys' Optical Solutions Group.