LOFT member, Henry Quach, received the 2022 ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) Scholar Award and joined the dinner event with donors. You can read the full story here.

Congratulations Henry! LOFT family is happy for you.

LOFT peer Vipender in India created a nice yoga video helping LOFT members to stay happy and healthy.  Enjoy!

Millions of people follow unhealthy lifestyle. Whether it’s sitting at their desks for too long, subjecting their eyes to uninterrupted hours of screen time on phones or desktops, children spending hours on different type of screen, ordering too many takeaways for dinner, or not finding enough time to catch those precious 8 hours of sleep, all these factors have led to people encountering major health issues, that affects not just their physical wellbeing, but also mental health, causing intense stress and anxiety.

In 2022, LOFT Co-PI Heejoo received Optica’s Kevin P. Thompson Optical Design Innovator Award “for innovative design of a UV cross-dispersion space telescope and engineering of a laser-truss Large Binocular Telescope metrology system.” Congratulations!

LOFT is happy to be a part of the educational mission at the Wyant College of Optical Sciences using the optical testing education kit supported by the AOM (Arizona Optical Metrology). Please, read the announcement by AOM below.

“AOM is proud to work with Dr. Daewook Kim, Dr. HeeJoo Choi and the faculty and staff at the University of Arizona Wyant College of Optical Sciences to deploy the first CGH Educational Kit to the OPTI513 Optical Fabrication and Testing Lab and Lecture courses! Dr. Shelby D V Ament highlighted the comprehensive kit which includes multiple CGHs, test optics, alignment targets, mounts and more to enable students and users to gain an understanding of the ins-and-outs of CGH metrology, and the many benefits the technique offers. If you are involved in optics education and have interest in our CGH Educational Kit, please reach out to Tyler Steele, tsteele@cghnulls.com Check out more details on our website: https://lnkd.in/gz_tRTKk“

Henry’s OASIS TVAC testing paper, “Surface Measurement of a Large Inflatable Reflector in Cryogenic Vacuum,” was selected as the Photonics journal’s front cover page highlight. The Open Access paper has been downloaded more than 400 times in less than 7 weeks since it has been published on Dec 21, 2021.

Daewook Kim will present for Optica’s Annual Celebrate Engineer Webinar Series at 15:00 EST (13:00 MST) on Friday, 25 February, 2022.

The talk title is “Extremely large ground and space optical systems”.

LOFT group’s Review Paper publications (2019) by Logan Graves, Greg Smith, Daniel Apai, and Daewook Kim received the Excellent Article’s Award from the journal’s Editorial Board in 2022.

“Based on the outstanding quality, wide influence of your paper published in “Nanomanufacturing and Metrology(NMME)”, the Editors-in-chief Prof. Fengzhou Fang and Prof. Wei Gao, in consulting with other editorial board members, selected you as a recipient of the Excellent Article’s Award.”

Congratulations to Logan and the co-authors. We, co-authors, are happy to make this contribution to our society.

Review Paper: Graves, L.R., Smith, G.A., Apai, D. et al. Precision Optics Manufacturing and Control for Next-Generation Large Telescopes. Nanomanuf Metrol 2, 65–90 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41871-019-00038-2

The Nautilus Space Telescope project has been featured in the Sky & Telescope Magazine Nov 2021 issue celebrating its 80th  anniversary. LOFT group develops the optical engineering technology for the project. Please, check out the Nautilus article page 32 – 33 of the magazine page (or, page 34 – 35 of the pdf page).

On Wednesday, August 11, 2021, the Livermore Lab Foundation (LLF) hosted its second-annual virtual Summer SLAM – Special Edition. Since 2018, the Foundation has partnered with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to recognize top presenters at the Lab’s annual poster symposium. This year, the Lab hosted approximately 650 summer research student interns. Over 200 students participated in the Lab’s virtual poster sessions. Two students from each directorate (Computing, Engineering, Global Security, NIF and Photon Science, Physical and Life Sciences, and Weapons and Complex Integration) were chosen to present at LLF’s Summer SLAM – Special Edition. These students were selected by their mentors and senior leaders for their exceptional work and presentations, showcasing the depth and breadth of the Lab’s world-class science and technology.

Our LOFT peer, Henry Quach, was selected as one of the Summer SLAM winners. All LOFT friends send big congratulations to Henry!

Please, visit LLF website to watch Henry’s presentation. 

A very special tribute to Jim Wyant, OSC Professor Emeritus and Founding Dean, will be held in conjunction with the SPIE Optics + Photonics conference in San Diego, CA next month. “A Tribute to James C. Wyant: The Extraordinaire of Optical Metrology and Optics Education” will include 34 presentations on Aug. 2 and 3, 2021. The majority of the presentations will be offered in-person and a few pre-recorded messages too. Find the online program and pdf brochure. For more information, please contact the tribute conference chairs Virendra Mahajan or Daewook Kim.