School of Engineering Graduate Seminar presenter to give talk on vision correction

ALFRED, NY— Wayne H. Knox, professor of optics, physics, vision science and materials science at the University of Rochester, will deliver a Graduate Seminar for Alfred University’s Inamori School of Engineering on Thursday, Nov. 4, from 10:20 to 11:10 a.m.

The seminar, titled “Progress Toward Noninvasive Vision Correction,” will be offered virtually, via Zoom.

Knox received his B.S. (1979) and PhD (1984) degrees in optics from the University of Rochester. He worked in the Advanced Photonics Research Department at Bell Laboratories from 1984 to 2001, serving as department head from 1997 to 2001. In 2001, he returned to the University of Rochester, where he became professor of optics, serving as director of The Institute of Optics from 2001-11.

He has published more than 200 papers and has more than 60 U.S. patents and 143 International patents. His research areas include femtosecond lasers, nonlinear fiber optics, spectroscopy, materials science, vision science and microplastics. He is a fellow of Optica (The Optical Society of America), American Physical Society, and the National Academy of Inventors.

Knox says in the abstract for his seminar presentation, “We have successfully applied advanced techniques of femtosecond laser micromachining to a wide range of ophthalmic materials, and made major advances in pursuit of a new approach to noninvasive vision correction. We demonstrate high quality vision correction devices made in three different vision application areas: customized contact lenses, intra-ocular lenses, and also directly writing in the human eye, in the stromal region of the cornea. The fundamental technology is the direct writing of lateral gradient index structures using the 3D localization made possible by multi-photon absorption in the focus of an intense femtosecond laser beam.”