Teaching 

• Understand the design and capabilities of most commercial optical systems.

• Identify the bottlenecks limiting performance in any specific application.

• Implement optical system design methods to tailor software and hardware for a given task, and improve performance in efficient and cost-effective ways.

• Process optically encoded information using computer simulation.

• Propose better optical instrumentation for research, medical or industrial applications that currently rely on suboptimal technologies.

This recorded lecture summarizes the contents we would discuss in weeks 4-5, wave optics and computer-generated holography. In these lectures, we also discuss simulations written in Matlab that are published on our lab GitHub.

Design thinking is a popular buzz term in this age of Kickstarter, instant turnaround, and short time-to-market. But what is design thinking really all about? In many ways, it is a process that most of us were quite familiar with in our preschool years. Observe an opportunity. Take an action. Assess the results. Laugh at the failures. Repeat. But how do we get back to that pure form of design thought? In this class we will dissect the process through an integrated format of discussion and making. Starting with the most basic of materials, we will exercise our latent creativity muscles and exorcise the constrained thinking and other obstacles engrained in us by “traditional” education. In this class, “failure” is an important concept that will be embraced and even celebrated. Science, entrepreneurship, and life itself is a process of try and try again. We must accept and learn from failure in order for “try” to become “do” and for “do” to lead to success.

Instructional time will center around team exercises in ideation, brainstorming, and the creation of physical prototypes. Concepts and process in design will be presented and discussed throughout class sessions with concurrent mentored activities that illustrate the discussion material. In simple terms, we’ll talk about the important elements of design and prototype development and, at the same time, you’ll be doing and making things that will illustrate what we’re talking about. A typical class session will start with a brief synthesis of the previous sessions and project work. We will then introduce the concept or expansion for the current session. We will frequently work in groups through a guided design activity that incorporates the creation of physical objects. These exercises will be actively facilitated by the instructor and TA mentors and feedback will be provided throughout the class period. In many cases, the classroom activity will extend into a homework assignment that will be completed by the team prior to the next class meeting.

Students will need to meet in teams outside of class time in order to complete assignments. For certain assignments, the teams will have access to mentors and instructors during their team meetings. Our students are expected to make extensive use of the BeAM makerspace network. BeAM is the perfect environment to continue your growth as an ideator and to make connections with fellow makers. BeAM is a safe zone for skills development, self-expression, and productive failure!

AS A TEACHING ASSISTANT AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
ELE453 (2010) Optics and Optoelectronics
EGR 191(2012) Introduction to Engineering
ELE 206 (2012) Introduction to VLSI and logic design
COS 226 (2013) Algorithms and Data Structures