Our Impact

As part of its national effort to introduce students to the field of photonics, Thorlabs brought its mobile demonstration lab to Rowan University’s Glassboro campus in October 2023.

This gave students and community members hands-on experiences with instruments used to measure, study, and harness light, resulting in increased awareness of photonics and related careers.

Advancing Photonics Technologies partner organization New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program, Inc. (NJMEP) hosted a May 2024 STEM Outreach event with a focus on photonics.

SRI, which creates and delivers world-changing solutions for a safer, healthier, and more sustainable future, presented information on advanced imaging systems.

Advancing Photonics Technologies hosted a June 2024 Photonics Workshop, bringing together researchers from Princeton, Rutgers, and Rowan Universities as well as Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen – Nürnberg (FAU) in Germany.

The workshop fostered collaboration and knowledge sharing in the fields of lasers and photonics through academic and social activities.

APT partner NJMEP is celebrating its new, state-of-the-art Mobile Training Center, made possible with funding from the New Jersey Business Action Center. In this way, NJMEP revolutionizes access to advanced manufacturing resources and training, which are key to photonics, for manufacturing operations, schools, and community centers throughout NJ, and educates young New Jerseyans on career opportunities with local manufacturers.

Through Advancing Photonics Technologies, a new research collaboration between Professor Xuejian Wu of Rutgers University-Newark and SRI International began. An experimental atomic physicist, Wu develops novel quantum sensors with unprecedented sensitivity and applies them to navigation, geophysics, and biology.

The College of New Jersey recently joined the Advancing Photonics Technologies coalition. Through APT, the TCNJ lab run by Professor David McGee began a research collaboration with SRI International. One of the high-impact outcomes of this collaboration is a talent pipeline to industry.

In July 2024, Alex Norman, executive director of the Princeton Materials Institute, welcomed TCNJ professor David McGee and a group of his students to the facilities at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. They toured the clean room at the Micro/Nano Fabrication Center, the MNFC Packaging Lab, and the Imaging and Analysis Center, learning how researchers use high-tech equipment to solve the world’s toughest photonics challenges.

In August 2024, Jamison Engelhardt, Rowan University PhD student, presented on Additive Manufacturing of GRIN Lenses Using Digital Light Projection at the 3rd Annual AMMI End-of-Summer Symposium to an audience of photonics enthusiasts and regional stakeholders.

The TCNJ-Thorlabs collaboration that started in June 2023 as a pilot to fabricate flat optics will continue through the 2024 academic year. The project involves former TCNJ students now working at Thorlabs and current TCNJ students doing photonics research.

In September 2024, TCNJ alum Ben Gruppuso started his PhD in photonics at Lehigh University. He follows in the footsteps of David McGee's former student, who is now the team lead for the Integrated Beamline Performance group within Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility. This illuminates a clear TNCJ to Lehigh—and beyond—success path.

During the summer 2024, David McGee's photonics group started a new international collaboration with the University of Naples in Italy and hosted a visiting PhD student. This new partnership broadens international awareness of APT and the NJ-PA-DE region's photonics innovation ecosystem.

In September 2024, APT shared the stage with NJMEP, SRI, and Nubis Communications on panel hosted by Princeton University's Pace Center for Civic Engagement for first-year students. Panelists discussed breaking into STEM careers, as well as how to maintain healthy professional and personal lives, navigate barriers such as unconscious biases and imposter syndrome, and wear “multiple hats,” while seizing opportunities and soaring in STEM roles as women who are “doing it all.”

In September 2024, APT and PhotonicsNJ participated in SPIE’s Congressional Reception in Washington, DC. Highlighting innovation, workforce development, economic impact, and more, Representatives’ remarks illuminated the importance of photonics to technological advancements, national security, and job creation.

APT Member Company Krell Technologies, a leading innovator in photonics solutions, announced the launch of its inaugural Photonics Outreach Program aimed at high school students on Sept. 30. The first group of students to participate, two dozen high school juniors and seniors from Pleasantville, NJ, came to Krell’s Neptune City facility for an immersive, hands-on exploration of photonics.