ORLANDO, Fla. – It’s been said that the 21st century is the Age of Light. And that means careers in the engineering fields of optics and photonics are in high demand. The University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics, or CREOL, is only one of six such engineering programs nationwide. CREOL hosted three week-long summer camps for students in 10th through 12th grade interested in physics and engineering.
News’s Julie Broughton asked Dr. David Hagan, CREOL’s dean, to tell us more about what happens at the school.
“Well, we do optics and photonics. So, optics people tend to think optics is eyeglasses, but it’s a lot more. Photonics is the manipulation of light. So, things like lasers, and fiber optics, are photonic devices, whereas eyeglasses and telescopes are thought of more as optical devices. And we do research and all these different things here.”
Hagan explained more about how we all use this technology daily.
“So cell phones are a great example. And the biggest thing you see, and probably the highest ticket item, on a cell phone is the display. That’s a photonic device. There’s a lot of research going into that. And, if you have a certain kind of phone that most people have, the display was designed by some of our alumni. So, we had very strong research and education programs in display technology. But you’ve got the camera, you got the LED, these are photonic devices. Inside, you have the chips, these electronic chips are electronic, but they’re manufactured using high-resolution optical lithography,” said Hagan.
“And that’s another industry that employs a lot of graduates. When you make a call, when you do a Google search, you’re accessing the fiber optic network. And so, a lot of our students study fiber optics and communications, and a lot of them get employed by companies like Google, AT&T, Verizon, you name it. When you do a search, you’re going into a data center. And that’s where fiber optics comes into its own because you get all these computers connected at high speed by fiber optics. And the reason they use fibers is one, it’s fast. And two, it uses low power, because power is a huge issue when making data centers. AI is also powered by fiber optics,” Hagan said.
“Do you find that sometimes when you meet people who don’t know about this, they have the same reaction I did a while I didn’t know all this happens right here?” Broughton asked.
“That’s one of the reasons why we’re having the photonics camp. So people can learn a little bit more about what optics and photonics is. We have a photonics engineering program here. And it’s kind of unusual, there are only about six in the nation. And people, although we’re known in the field of optics and photonics, we’re not too well known in the local area for and we want to get students to become aware of this as a career option.,” Hagan said. “So that’s one of the reasons we run the science camps. The other one is optics is a great way to teach science. And if any of these students come in and decide to follow a career in science or technology, whether it’s optics or anything, then that’s great. It’s a win for us.”
Broughton asked what types of careers are possible with a degree in optics and photonics.
“Typically, optical engineers, photonic engineers. They might be called laser engineers. They might be called systems engineers. But typically, they will work in companies like Google and Apple. So big tech companies. Or they might work for telecom companies like Verizon or AT&T. They might work for some of our local companies. We’ve got quite a few local companies and aerospace and defense companies like Lockheed Martin. And we have some small companies doing optics like Luminar Lightpath. So there are all sorts of different companies that people can work with, and they can do all sorts of different things, be it communications, biomedical engineering, defense, telecom. There are a lot of great careers to be had,” Hagan said.
Hagan was the median salary for a Bachelor’s degree in the field is $75,000.
Hagan says next year, he’d like to expand to offering camps for educators, so they can teach optics and photonics in their own classrooms.
For more information about CREOL, visit their website here: https://creol.ucf.edu/
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