Today we transmit images with digital cameras and make long-distance phone calls for 10 cents a minute, thanks to fiber-optic cables. Tomorrow we may use an improved version of that technology to download entire libraries of information on our computers -- in a matter of seconds, rather than hours -- and physicians may have access to scanning equipment that can help them track cancerous cells.
Those and other advances will result from research in photonics, the science that harnesses light for practical uses. The ability to send particles of light energy -- photons -- through optical fibers as thin as one human hair has almost completely displaced electronics for transmitting information long distances. Researchers at Stanford and Duke now are revving up to design new generations of lasers and light-emitting diodes that likely will revolutionize telecommunications.
Both universities have received $25 million from high-tech entrepreneur Michael J. Fitzpatrick and his wife, Patty, to establish research centers for advanced photonics. Fitzpatrick is former head of San Jose-based E-Tek Dynamics Inc., which makes fiber-optic components and systems for cable television and telecommunications.
The Fitzpatrick Center for Photonics at Stanford will be constructed in the Science and Engineering Quadrangle over the next five years. Replacing the Ginzton Labs, the new facility is expected to open by summer 2004. It will house between 16 and 20 faculty, 120 doctoral students and 50 more postdocs, research engineers and visiting staff from affiliated companies. Researchers at Stanford and Duke will collaborate in distance learning and joint research and symposia.
"The photonics business is growing faster than Microsoft grew," says electrical engineering professor David Miller, who was at AT&T Bell Laboratories from 1981 to 1996 and will direct the new institute.
