UCF recently signed a licensing agreement with Holochip Corp. to produce zoom lenses with technology developed at UCF's Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers.
Holochip Corp. is an adaptive lens manufacturer based in Albuquerque, N.M. and San Francisco that supplies specialized lenses to manufacturers of camera phones, digital cameras and medical and military products.
Shin-Tson Wu, provost-distinguished professor of optics at UCF, and his team of colleagues and students at UCF's College of Optics and Photonics developed the lenses.
The zoom lens is similar to those used in digital cameras and camera phones, only smaller in size. Despite the size difference, the quality is comparable to larger lenses, and the images produced are just as clear.
M.J. Soileau, vice president for Research and Commercialization at UCF, stressed the importance of receiving a patent for the lens and the signing of a licensing agreement.
"Not all patents are ever licensed," Soileau said. "Most patents, in fact, are not licensed."
Soileau said the licensing of the zoom lens is great for UCF.
"It gives [UCF] visibility," he said. "To have it licensed is another validation of the quality of the work that we're doing here."
In addition to the recognition he is receiving here, Wu and his accomplishments are visible on the international scene, which also gives the university recognition, Soileau said.
Wu is well known in the community of adaptive lenses, said Rob Batchko, CEO of Holochip Corp.
"The field of adaptive lenses encompasses a close-knit community," Batchko said. "Professor Wu is an integral member of this community and is highly respected for his many years of prolific pioneering contributions to the field."
Wu spent 18 years at Hughes Research Laboratories before coming to UCF in 2001. He is known for his advances in the fields of liquid crystal displays and liquid-crystal optics.
Faculty members such as Wu help UCF stand out in academic research and "that's extremely important for our university," Soileau said.
Getting a patent licensed will also allow UCF to become more visible to the federal granting agencies that supply money for research, Soileau said.
"They like to see that the university's research leads to something that is tangible," he said.
Wu has secured over $8 million of contracting grant money since he has been with UCF, Soileau said.
UCF did $121 million of booked research funding in the last fiscal year. In 1999, Soileau said, the university was only doing about $35 million a year in sponsored research.
The licensing of the zoom lens also has benefits that reach outside the realm of UCF.
The lens will be manufactured smaller than a current zoom lens and has applications from cell phone cameras to smart headlights in automobiles.
This lens is different because of its construction and the way it operates.
"We are mimicking the human eye," Wu said.
Like the human eye, an adaptive-focus lens is able to zoom without the use of mechanical moving parts.
"When we read or look at a long distance, our eyeball can adjust its shape because our brain commands our muscles to contract or to relax, and the shape of the lens changes," Wu said. "In our liquid lens, we use a similar mechanism."
Developing the lens has been interesting and challenging for Wu and his team.
"There [are] some challenging parts because we have to control a lot of things and keep a lot of issues in [mind]," said David Fox, a Ph.D. student at CREOL and a member of Wu's team.
Developing the lens was not easy.
"It seems like kind of a simple concept, but when you actually get down to working on it and trying to make improvements, it's really difficult," said Marcus Bagnell, a senior physics major from the University of Florida. "To put [the lens] inside a cell phone, it's a big task," he said.
Bagnell is part of a summer program with the National Science Foundation and a member of Wu's team.
After this experience, Bagnell, impressed with the program and Wu, has considered continuing his graduate studies at CREOL.
The licensing of the zoom lens patent is an example of university research succeeding and influencing the technological advancement of the professional world, Wu said.
"We like to educate our students to the state of the art," Wu said, "so we reach from scientific discovery to critical applications."
The greater applications to which the team's research has led are what enable scientific discoveries to extend to and help people in the real world, Wu said.
"We are doing science and research here, and we really [would] like to carry [that] one step further," he said. "Realize that our scientific discovery can benefit human beings."
1 comments