• Former Director
Duncan Moore: Former President of
Optica, Pioneer in the field of
gradient index optics and leader in technical entrepreneurship. • Former Director
Xicheng Zhang: Pioneer in the field of
teraHertz technology. • Former Director
P. Scott Carney: Pioneer in the field of
physical optics with notable contributions to
biomedical optics. • Former Director
Wayne H. Knox: Former Director of the Advanced Photonics Research Department at
Bell Labs and pioneer in
ultrafast optics and
femtosecond laser ophthalmology. • Current director
Thomas G. Brown: Noted for the study of unconventional polarization states of light and leader in
AIM Photonics. •
Govind Agrawal: Pioneer and highly cited author in
Optical Communications,
Optical Fibers, and
Nonlinear Optics. •
Robert W. Boyd: Pioneer and highly cited author in
non-linear optics and
quantum optics. • David Williams: Former director of the
Center for Visual Science, pioneer in the use of adaptive optics for retinal imaging. •
Susana Marcos: Current director of the
Center for Visual Science, pioneer in
vision science and engineering. •
Joseph H. Eberly: Pioneer in the field of
quantum optics, former President of the
Optical Society of America, and founding editor of
Optics Express, the first open access publication in optics. •
James Zavislan: Professor of Optics, Biomedical Engineering and Ophthalmology. •
James Fienup: Pioneer in optical imaging and
phase retrieval. •
Chunlei Guo: Pioneer in
femtosecond laser processing of materials. • Andrew Berger: Award-winning educator and expert in
biomedical optics. •
Julie Bentley : Award-winning educator and expert in
optical design. •
Jannick Rolland: Director of the Center for Freeform Optics and the Robert E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design and Engineering. •
Susan Houde-Walter: Former President of
Optica, Entrepreneur, Pioneer in the field of
optical materials. • Director
Dennis G. Hall: Pioneer in the field of
guided-wave optics and
electromagnetic theory and was among the first to predict the emergence of
silicon photonics. • Interim Director
Ian Walmsley: Pioneer in
Quantum Optics, co-invented
Spectral phase interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction (SPIDER), formerly of the
University of Oxford Department of Physics, currently Provost of Imperial College (London UK). •
Lukas Novotny: Pioneer in
nano-optics. •
Carlos Stroud: Pioneer in the field of
quantum optics and
Quantum Information. • Former Director Nicholas George: Pioneer in
physical optics,
holography, and
electronic imaging. •
Leonard Mandel: Pioneer in the field of
quantum optics, first demonstrated
photon self interference, discovered the
Mandel Formula. •
Rudolf Kingslake: Pioneer in the field of
lens design, founding faculty member. •
Robert E. Hopkins: Pioneer in the field of
optical engineering, former director and founder of
Tropel Corporation. •
M. Parker Givens: Director of the institute from 1975 to 1977 • Stephen Jacobs: Pioneer in
Liquid Crystals, and in
Magneto-Rheological Finishing. •
Emil Wolf: Pioneer in the field of
coherence theory and
quantum optics, predicted the
Wolf Effect. • Former Director
Kenneth Teegarden: Pioneer in
exciton physics and
color centers. ==Research areas==