Dr. Alex Maldonado successfully defended his dissertation, ‘Resolution Optical Surface Metrology with the “Slope measuring Portable Optical Test System” (SPOTS)’, on September 5th, 2014.  Congratulations, and please see his publications for more details about his work.

Dr. Laura Coyle successfully defended her dissertation, “Precision alignment and calibration of optical systems using computer generated holograms”, on August 8th, 2014.  Congratulations, and please see her other publications for more detail on her work.

Measurements of polarization of the cosmic microwave background. Credit: POLARBEAR

A recent publication in the Astrophysical Journal reported that curl was detected in some of the oldest measurable light in the universe.  This was the result of measurements taken from an observatory in Chile’s Atacama desert.  See source for more information.