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.

In a new publication from Opto-Electronic Advances; DOI 10.29026/oea.2021.210040, Researchers led by Professor Daewook Kim from The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA consider advances in optical engineering for future telescopes. Please, read the EurekAlert article.

LOFT peers (Jaren, George, Charlotte, and Daewook) have been a part of OpticStudio (Zemax) STOP feature beta program. We are pleased to be a part of the industrial software development and advancement serving our international community.

“When doing work with NASA, the optics must be perfect. As a member of our beta program, the team at the University of Arizona used the STAR module to prepare their proposal for the future NASA exoplanet detection mission designing advanced telescopic optics.

“Now we get the data from the FEA software into OpticStudio and use the STAR module for STOP analysis,” said Daewook Kim, University of Arizona Assistant Professor of Optical Sciences and Astronomy. “We can quickly and easily see the structural and thermal impacts and ensure our optical designs are accurate.”

Here is the full announcement by OpticStudio (Zemax).

Daewook Kim was a part of the NAS (The National Academy of Science) panel on review of “An Assessment of the Material Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2020 (2021).” LOFT group is happy to be a part of this national activity serving our national institutes and publics. You can download the publically available NAS report.

We are happy to say that our LOFT peers Justin Hyatt and Christian Davila-Peralta received a NSF grant for their start-up company Paramium. Also, LOFT students are working on the thermoforming technologies with them. “Paramium said its “innovative” manufacturing solution unlocks rapid prototyping capabilities for antenna designers because it is faster and more versatile than traditional methods. The underlying technology was developed by researchers and faculty that stem from the University of Arizona through the College of Engineering, College of Science and College of Optical Sciences and is licensed through Tech Launch Arizona (TLA).” Here is a full story! Congratulations to our LOFT peers!

UArizona Will Lead NASA Space Telescope Mission to Reveal Unseen, Dynamic Lives of Galaxies. NASA has selected UArizona’s Aspera mission for a $20 million mission to build a space telescope that will map vast regions of star-forming gas that have eluded observation for decades. LOFT group is happily joining this exciting project led by PI Carlo Vargas. Please, read more.

Dae Wook (LOFT peer) is going to offer Optical Introduction to Interferometric Optical Testing Course (SC213) at the annual SPIE Optics + Photonics conference in San Diego. This short course introduces the field of interferometric optical testing. Topics covered include basic interferometers for optical testing, and concepts of phase-shifting interferometry including error analysis. Long wavelength interferometry, testing of aspheric surfaces, measurement of surface microstructure, and the state-of-the-art of direct phase measurement interferometers are also discussed.

LOFT peer, Dae Wook, served as the guest editor for the special issue of Optical Engineering journal by SPIE. This guest editorial introduces the Special Section on Ultraprecision Optics Fabrication and Characterization.

Please, check out the editorial summary article.

As a member of this exciting optics community, LOFT group feels happy to see and learn from a nice work from other groups in the world. Dae Wook (LOFT member) wrote a comment for a OSA Spotlight paper, “System design of a single-shot reconfigurable null test using a spatial light modulator for freeform metrology” by Romita Chaudhuri, Jonathan Papa, and Jannick P. Rolland at the University of Rochester group. Please, check out the Optics Letters paper!

Logan’s recent Optics Express publication, “Infinite deflectometry enabling 2pi-steradian measurement range,” has been chosen for the OSA Spotlight on Optics. Here is a message from OSA. “Spotlight on Optics showcases research produced in out journals-research and information that would be impossible without your talent and contribution. Your paper is in excellent company. Only two papers are highlighted from our respective journals each month from among the scores of fine articles published.” We are happy for this academic contribution from our member recognized by our community. Congratulation, Logan and the co-authors!