The new bachelor of science degree in Photonics Science and Engineering will enable graduates to work for employers that create photonic or photonic-enabled products for applications in manufacturing, solar energy, smart lighting, medical diagnostics and therapeutics, telecommunications and computer technologies.

Approved earlier this year by the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Board of Trustees, the degree program is a joint initiative between the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ College of Optics and Photonics (known as CREOL, which stands for the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers) and the College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS).

The degree is the only bachelor’s program in optics and photonics in Florida. Only three other institutions offer this type of undergraduate engineering degree in the nation.

The new degree also will help optics and photonics-related companies reduce the need to train new hires who are often electrical engineers but need additional skills in photonics.

Graduates skilled in photonics and engineering are in demand. Florida has 270 optics and photonics companies with 60 in Central Florida. The formation of CREOL at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ 26 years ago has led to the birth of many of these companies, which has translated into the need for a highly trained workforce with specialized skills in optics and photonics.

“Optics is a venerable subject that has its roots in physics and astronomy, involving instruments such as telescopes and microscopes,” said Bahaa Saleh, dean of CREOL. “But photonics has emerged more recently when lasers, opto-electronics and optical fibers became available.”

The principal base of photonics is electrical engineering, a field that deals with electronics, communication, radio and microwave systems, said Michael Georgiopoulos, dean of CECS. “The partnership between the two colleges at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ is a natural progression that represents a win-win scenario for the students and their future employers,” he said.

At Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½, the joint program will have approximately 28 faculty. “It’s a unique venture to have a collaborative program between two colleges. When the students graduate, they will be alumni of both colleges,” said Mike McKee, who will serve as associate director of the degree program.

Enrolled students will take a common set of engineering courses along with key courses in electrical engineering and specialized photonic science and engineering classes. Both colleges will provide advising for students in the early part of the program, and CREOL later will advise students taking specialized courses in photonics sciences and engineering.

Photonic science is considered an enabling technology. For example, a smart phone uses many photonics applications, such as the screen and camera. Many technology companies, although not considered primarily photonics companies, require the expertise of photonics engineers to develop their products.

According to the 2014 U.S. News and World Report Rankings of Graduate Schools, the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Optics graduate program and the Electrical Engineering graduate program rank 13 and 55 respectively.

The college, which is an international leader in laser and photonics research, has planned several activities from Monday, Feb. 25 through March 1 to help the public understand why laser and photonics research matters. And they’re making their events visual and down-to-earth so people can appreciate their work.

“The world of lasers and photonics is developing at an amazing pace,â€� said Bahaa Saleh, the dean of the college. “It’s quite exciting. Most people don’t realize the technology is practically in everything we use today from DVDs to cancer treatment. Here at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ we are on the cutting edge of this technology and we hope our events this week show the community why our research matters, not just to us scientists, but to people everywhere.”

From lasers that light up music concerts to solar panels that provide clean energy at cost savings, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½â€™s scientists are making a difference. So the college is inviting Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ and its surrounding community to visit its facilities this week and see the practical applications of their work. Among the events planned:

3 p.m. Monday: Laser Light Show in CREOL Room 102. CREOL has partnered with Pangolin Laser Systems; a world-renowned manufacturer of laser control systems, to put on a presentation about laser technology and how it is used in the entertainment industry. In addition to the presentation, Pangolin will perform a live laser light show for those in attendance.

10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Solar Day hosted by the Florida Solar Energy Center at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½â€™s Cocoa campus. Participate in activities and demonstrations including photovoltaics, solar thermal cooking, hydrogen fuel cell technology, and how to use solar energy in emergencies. FSEC’s director Jim Fenton will lead a demonstration on “PV on your Roof and Pay $1.08 a Gallonâ€� at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Lasers – The Light Fantastic: Science and Applications from Pointers to DVDs. Professor Peter J. Delfyett will lead a lecture in CREOL room 102 covering the basic principles of how lasers work and highlight several examples of real world applications, such as the CD or DVD player and fiber optic communications. Simple principles will be accompanied with several hands-on-demonstrations.

4:30 p.m., on Wednesday, the CREOL 2013 KHET Tournament. Watch 16 students play a  KHET laser game tournament. The game is similar to chess, but involves bouncing laser beams onto different pieces on a board. The winner receives the latest KHET game. The tournament will be held in CREOL room 103. Sign up Monday from 1-5 p.m. in the CREOL lobby.

1 – 5 p.m. on Thursday, CREOL Optics Day Open House: The Cycle of Innovation. There will be a series of demonstrations, lab tours and meetings with professionals. There will be free giveaways and optics games.

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Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ Professor Zenghu Chang from the Department of Physics and the College of Optics and Photonics, led the effort that generated a 67-attosecond pulse of extreme ultraviolet light. The results of his research are published online under Early Posting in the journal Optics Letters.

An attosecond is an incomprehensible quintillionith of a second.  In other words it would take 15 million billion pulses of the size Chang’s team achieved to equal one second. The accomplishment is even more remarkable because the team did it without the use of specialized equipment including a mile-long particle accelerator or a Superdome-sized synchrotron.

“Dr. Chang’s success in making ever-shorter light pulses helps open a new door to a previously hidden world, where we can watch electrons move in atoms and molecules, and follow chemical reactions as they take place,â€� said Michael Johnson, the dean of the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ College of Sciences and a physicist.  “It is astounding to imagine that we may now be able to watch quantum mechanics in process.â€�

Quantum mechanics is the study of physics at the microscopic level, specifically looking at energy and matter on this miniscule scale.

There is much excitement about the accomplishment and the promise Chang’s work holds for helping scientists understand how the world’s smallest building blocks actually work. The technique could lead scientists to understand how energy can be harnessed to transport data, deliver targeted cancer therapies or diagnose disease. The finding marks the first significant breakthrough in the laser pulse field in four years.

In 2001, attosecond pulses were demonstrated for the first time. Since then scientists around the world have been trying to make ever-shorter pulse durations because of the door they could open to understanding the subatomic world. The previous record of an 80-attosecond pulse was set in 2008 at the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Germany. This is the first time an American-led team has set the record.

“The quest for generating shorter and shorter pulses of light has been ongoing since the invention of the laser more than five decades ago,â€� said Bahaa Saleh, dean of CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics. “Dr. Chang’s recent advance brings Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ to the forefront of this Olympic race and opens up new frontiers for seeing and recording ultrafast dynamic atomic phenomena.â€�

Chang’s team was able to accomplish the work at the Florida Atto Science &Technology (FAST) lab in Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½â€™s Physical Sciences building.

Using the unprecedented power of laser light enables Chang and his peers to conduct their high-level research in much smaller spaces.  Chang’s group created a technique called Double Optical Grating that allows extreme ultraviolet light to be cut off in a manner that concentrates the maximum amount of energy in the shortest possible pulse of light. With the affinity for acronyms shared by many ultrafast laser physicists, Chang named the technique DOG. In addition to creating the light pulse, he created an even faster camera to measure it, which is the Phase Retrieval by Omega Oscillation Filtering (PROOF).

The Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative and the National Science Foundation helped fund the research.

Others who contributed to the team’s discovery include: Kun Zhao, Qi Zhang, Michael Chini, Yi Wu, and Xiaowei Wang, all at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½.

Bahaa Saleh, dean of the college, will talk from 12:15 to 12:30 p.m. about how ubiquitous optics and lasers have become, as well as the big picture of optics and CREOL’s mission.

Professor Peter Delfyett will talk from 12:30 to 12:50 p.m. about one application of optics, fiber optic communications, and some of his group’s latest research.

During the lab tours, visitors can see how optical fibers are made, diffraction and spatial filtering, how a pulse of light can be used to generate a wide spectrum of colors, and other displays. Lab tours start at 1, 2 and 3 p.m.

Demonstrations will run continuously in the lobby from 1 to 4 p.m., illustrating principles such as reflection, refraction, waveguiding, and diffraction.

Optics Day is sponsored by the CREOL Association of Optics Students (CAOS), which will give away keychain laser pointer/LED flashlights and diffraction-grating glasses. The glasses split the spectrum of a light source into its different color components, and can also be used in conjunction with the laser pointers to create interesting patterns, said Tony Klee, graduate research assistant.

“SPIE and CREOL have enjoyed a long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship,” SPIE president Eustace Dereniak said during an awards banquet. “CREOL has supported the growth of our Defense, Security, and Sensing symposium for many years, and has been home to an SPIE student chapter for over 15 years.â€�

Dereniak also recognized M.J. Soileau, one of CREOL’s founding directors, who served as a SPIE president and received the society’s highest award, the Gold Medal. Today, Soileau is vice president for Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½â€™s Office of Research and Commercialization.

CREOL celebrated its anniversary with a two-day symposium that included talks by two Nobel laureates and several SPIE fellows. The event also drew more than 300 people from the industry including laser pioneer Charles Townes who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964 for his work in the development of the laser. CREOL’s laser institute is named in Townes’ honor. For a video about CREOL’s future .

CREOL is a leader in laser and optics research. Several SPIE fellows including Leonid Glebov, James Harvey, Guifang Li, Winston Schoenfeld, Eric Van Stryland, Shin-Tson Wu, Larry Andrews and Cynthia Young work at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½. James Pearson, a former SPIE  executive director also works with CREOL as a special consultant. They were all recognized Thursday.

CREOL was organized as a  center of excellence in optics and lasers in research and education, and to act as an intellectual, scientific and technical resource to the optics and photonics industry. Since then, CREOL has formed strong bonds with industry, has become a major force in Florida’s laser and photonics community, and is a prime source of highly educated talent in the optics and photonics field.

SPIE was founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. Serving more than 225,600 constituents from 150 countries, the society advances emerging technologies through interdisciplinary information exchange, continuing education, publications, patent precedent and career and professional growth. SPIE annually organizes and sponsors about 25 major technical forums, exhibitions and education programs in North America, Europe, Asia and the South Pacific.  SPIE provided more than $2.5 million in support of education and outreach programs in 2011.

The two-day symposium will be opened at 8:30 a.m. Thursday in the FAIRWINDS Alumni Center by Tony Waldrop, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½â€™s provost and executive vice president, and Bahaa Saleh, dean of the college and director of CREOL.

Thursday’s plenary talk will be presented at 9:30 a.m. by John Hall, the 2005 Nobel Prize winner in Physics. He will discuss lasers and a proposed space experiment to test Albert Einstein’s assumptions of physics. Hall currently works with JILA (formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics) operated by the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Nicolaas Bloembergen, the recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics, will present Friday’s plenary talk at 9 a.m. Bloembergen, a member of the University of Arizona faculty, will talk about the origin of nonlinear optics.

A third Nobel Prize winner, Charles Townes, inventor of the laser and namesake of the college’s Townes Laser Institute, also will be in attendance. CREOL’s Martin Richardson, director of the institute, will discuss future projects of the research facility at 1 p.m. Thursday.

Dean Saleh will talk about the future of optics and photonics at 8:30 a.m. Friday, and additional presentations will be made during both days by speakers from Stanford, Cornell, Southampton, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ and other universities.

For a complete schedule of sessions, tours, presentations and venues, click.

The Laser Institute of America (LIA) is an international society dedicated to fostering lasers, laser applications, and laser safety worldwide.