Title: Shaping Tomorrow's World: The Fusion of X-Realities and Emerging Optical Technologies
Abstract: In the 1960s, Ivan Sutherland's "Sword of Damocles" inspired generations to forge the future of X-Realities (XR), encompassing a diverse array of technologies and applications. In this talk, we will review historical milestones and peak at some particularly enticing emerging applications of XR. We will then delve into connecting to the cutting-edge technologies of freeform optics and metasurfaces, which are poised to disrupt how we experience the world around us.
About the Speaker: Jannick P. Rolland is Brian J. Thompson, a professor of optical engineering at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester and the chief technology officer of LighTopTech, a startup she co-founded in 2013 in biotechnology. At the University of Rochester, she is the director of the NSF I/UCRC Center for Freeform Optics (CeFO) and the director of the R.E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design and Engineering. She leads the ODALab, which supports a team of 20 scholars from undergraduates to senior scientists. Professor Rolland holds appointments in the Center for Visual Science and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She earned an optical engineering diploma from the Institut D'Optique Théorique et Appliquée, France, and master's and doctoral degrees in optical science from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. Professor Rolland started her academic career in computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1990-96) and is a founding optics faculty member of CREOL (1996-2008). Professor Rolland is a Fellow of Optica (former OSA), SPIE, NYSTAR, and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Professor Rolland served as director at large on the OSA Board of Directors 2010-13, as associate editor of Presence (1996-2006), Optical Engineering (1999-2004), Optics Letters (2016-22), and OPTICA (2022-present). She received the 2014 David Richardson Medal, the 2017 Edmund A. Hajim Outstanding Faculty Award, and the 2020 Joseph Fraunhofer Medal and Robert M. Burley Prize. She is also a member of the EU Academy of Sciences, an inaugural member of the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Academy founded in 2023 and one of 101 first inductees in the XR Hall of Fame inaugurated in 2024.
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