As PhotonicsWest took place in San Francisco this week with a stunning participation from the University of Rochester with multiple presentations from Students, Postdocs, and Faculty of the The Institute Of Optics, University of Rochester Center for Visual Science (CVS), Center for Freeform Optics (CeFO), and Center for Extended Reality (CXR) together with a strong participation from our NY Optics Industry and global industry partners, Barry Silverstein also coordinated new activities as part of the AR Alliance, which the University of Rochester joined in 2026, including the formation of various working groups on all aspects of Laser Displays for XR, several of which Faculty participated in.
Some special highlights were our participation in the SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics SPIE XR Student Optical Design Challenge, where three of Dr. Jannick Rolland’s students, Chi Zhang, Renuka Manjula Narayanan, and Yiwen Fan, were selected as part of seven finalists and gave excellent pitches:
– Chi with his pitch on “Wide-Angle Compact AR/VR Flash LiDAR” a collaborative project with Prof. Aaron Bauer, Dr. Daniel Nikolov, and Prof. Nick Vamivakas
– Renuka with her pitch on “Binocular Visual Simulator for Human-Centric Virtual Reality Experience,” a collaborative project with Prof. Susana Marcos (the Master Mind and Lead of this project)
– Yiwen with her project on “An Optimization Tool for Designing Large-Scale Metasurfaces with Strong Near-field Coupling for AR/VR,” a collaborative project with Dr. Daniel Nikolov (Lead on this project) and Prof. Nick Vamivakas.
🏅 We are pleased to announce that Renuka won second place and Yiwen third place.