David Samuels found a University of Colorado at Boulder program to be invaluable to his success during an internship with Sony Corp. in Japan last summer.
The CU-Boulder graduate student participates in the Optical Science and Engineering Program, or OSEP, which provides unique high-tech training intended to better prepare young scientists and engineers for jobs in optics. In Japan, Samuels had a running start.
"I already felt like I had a very solid base of understanding, so I felt that when I came in I didn't have to learn any of the basic ideas," Samuels said. "I could immediately jump in and understand everything they were trying to do."
Program director and CU-Boulder physics Professor Dana Anderson said OSEP is intended to train graduate students from physics, chemistry and engineering backgrounds in widely used optics technology. Examples of optics are found in everything from cell phones, grocery scanners and digital cameras to lasers, fiber optic communications and ultraprecise measurement devices.
"A lot of these disciplines employ optical technology," Anderson said. "So we're giving these students a broad background in optics whether they plan a future in academia or industry."
The program bridges the gap between academia and industry for the 25 students who currently participate, he explained. "In physics and chemistry, about 80 percent of students come into our programs saying, 'Oh, I want to go into academics.' The fact is that about 80 percent of physicists and chemists go work in industry," Anderson said.
In addition to core course requirements, OSEP students participate in seminars and lab rotations outside their major field of study. "For example, you wouldn't normally have an electrical engineer doing a laser cooling experiment," Anderson said. "But they can do that in the advanced optics lab."
"The advanced optics lab is very rigorous," Samuels said. "We met one day a week for about 12 hours a day, sometimes more. We all complain about it when we're taking it, because it seems like a lot of information we're being asked to absorb, but I made use of four or five different procedures that I learned in that optics lab while I was working for Sony."
Samuels didn't speak much Japanese and couldn't read the language at all before his stint in Tokyo. He now owns a kimono, and misses the delicious sushi he sampled in Japan. He said that in spite of the cultural and language barriers, he found Sony to be a reasonably easy and open work environment.
Samuels' success is an example of OSEP's close working relationship with the optics and photonics industry. Anderson said it's difficult to find a new technology that doesn't involve optics.
"The forefront of science employs optics extensively, like the lasers that are used to cool atoms to a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero and the new ultraviolet and x-ray lasers that may have a dramatic impact on the health sciences," Anderson said.
"The speed and number of transistors on computer chips is continuously improving. What is the semiconductor industry counting on over the next 10 years for still more remarkable chips? It's improvements to optical lithography and light sources. That kind of research is being done right here in Colorado."
OSEP is turning out students prepared for innovation, according to Anderson. "They will be the ones to bring optics to the food industry, to environmental sensing, to security, to entertainment. Where the students go, the optics science and technology will follow."
OSEP is one of two programs at CU-Boulder to receive an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training, or IGERT, grant from the National Science Foundation. The CU-Boulder program will continue to receive about $700,000 annually for five years from the foundation.
There are only about 100 IGERT programs nationwide.
"Over the past few years through the OSEP program, the University of Colorado at Boulder has come to be known as a place to learn and to do optics on par with the best optics institutions in the world," Anderson said. "We are very proud of that, and we think the National Science Foundation is too - OSEP is honored to be among the extremely few IGERT programs to successfully re-compete for a second five-year term of support."
For more information about OSEP visit .