Florian Willomitzer

Associate Professor of Optical Sciences
Florian Willomitzer Headshot

Meinel 629
Wyant College of Optical Sciences
The University of Arizona
1630 E. University Blvd.
P.O. Box 210094
Tucson, AZ 85721-0094

Florian Willomitzer an Associate Professor at the Wyant College of Optical Sciences and directs the Computational 3D Imaging and Measurement (3DIM) Lab. He graduated from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. degree with honors (‘summa cum laude’) in 2017. During his doctoral studies, he investigated physical and information-theoretical limits of optical 3D-sensing for medical imaging and industrial inspection, and implemented sensors that operate close to these limits.

In the 3DIM Lab, Prof. Willomitzer and his team work on novel methods to image hidden objects through scattering media or around corners, high-resolution holographic displays, unconventional methods for precise VR eye-tracking, and the implementation of high-precision metrology methods in low-cost mobile handheld devices. Moreover, the group develops novel time-of-flight and structured light imaging techniques working at depth resolutions in the 100μm-range.

Prof. Willomitzer serves/served as Chair and Committee Member of several Optica COSI conferences, Optics Chair of the 2022 IEEE ICCP conference, Chair and Host of the Optica Incubator on Imaging Through 100 Scattering Lengths, Committee member of Optica FiO conferences and as reviewer for Nature, Optica (OSA), SPIE, IEEE and CVPR. He is a recipient of the NSF CRII grant, winner of the Optica 20th Anniversary Challenge, and his Ph.D. thesis was awarded with the Springer Theses Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Research.

Education & Work Experience

  • Associate Professor of Optical Sciences: The University of Arizona, Wyant College of Optical Sciences, Aug. 2022 - present
  • Research Assistant Professor: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Northwestern University, Nov. 2019 - Aug. 2022
  • Postdoctoral Fellow: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Northwestern University, Aug. 2017 - Nov. 2019
  • Research Associate: Institute of Optics, Information and Photonics, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany, Jan. 2011 - Aug. 2017
  • Part-time Teacher: high school physics, grades 9-12, Rudolf Steiner-School, Nuremberg, Germany, Dec. 2010 - July 2014
  • MS, Institute of Optics, Information and Photonics, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany, Oc. 2005 - Sept. 2010

Service

Chairs Held
  • Chair/Host, OPTICA Incubator on Imaging Through 100 Scattering Lengths, 2023  
  • General Chair, OPTICA Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging (COSI), 2022    
  • Optics Chair, IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP), 2022  
  • General Chair, OSA Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging (COSI), 2021  
  • Program Chair, OSA Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging (COSI), 2020 
Program Committee
  • OSA Frontiers in Optics (FiO), 2023   
  • OSA Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging (COSI), 2023    
  • Conf. of German Society of Applied Optics (DGaO), 2023    
  • OSA Frontiers in Optics (FiO), 2022      
  • OSA Computational Optical Sensing and Imaging (COSI), 2019
Editor
  • OSA Optics Express (Feature Issue on COSI), 2021  
  • OSA Applied Optics (Feature Issue on COSI), 2021  
  • OSA Applied Optics, 2021  
Reviewer
  • Nature  
  • Nature - Light: Science and Applications  
  • IEEE Conf. on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)  
  • OSA Optics Letters  
  • IEEE International Conf. on Computational Photography (ICCP)  
  • IEEE Transactions in Computational Imaging   
  • OSA Optics Express   
  • Light: Advanced Manufacturing  
  • SPIE Optical Engineering  
Teaching

Degree(s)

  • Ph.D., Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany; Institute of Optics, Information and Photonics, 2017
  • M.S., Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany; Institute of Optics, Information and Photonics, 2010