Optics student Jeanne Lyse Mugeni '21 is a Xerox Research Fellow working in the lab of Kenneth Marshall, a senior research engineer at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, photographed July 11, 2019. Mugeni is using polymer cholesteric liquid crystal (PCLC) flakes suspended in silicone oils (pictured) of various viscosities to visualize velocity gradients in an air stream directed across a metal surface. These suspended PCLC flakes reflect light at different wavelengths in the visible spectrum depending on the angle at which they are illuminated and viewed. This temperature-insensitive combination could be used to visualize airflow patterns over a surface, such as the wing of an aircraft. // photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester

Graduate Student in the Plasma and Ultrafast Physics Group Sara Bucht is reflected in a grating used in research in her lab at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics December 6, 2018. THe smaller grating in front was used by Nobel prize winner Donna Strickland in her research at the LLE in the 1980s. Bucht is using CPA to make a novel laser that will be used for laser-plasma amplifiers. Laser-plasma amplifiers could lead to a paradigm shift in short-pulse laser amplification (much like CPA did 30 years ago) and provide the enabling technology for achieving intensities necessary for strong field quantum electrodynamics research (potentially the next graduate student project to be recognized by the Nobel committee) // photo by J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester