Optics Education Summit Targets a Growing Need for Laser and Photonics Experts

Students exploring career pathways may be less familiar with the science of optics and photonics than they are with forensics, which is depicted on many popular TV crime shows.

But there is a growing demand for new workers in the field of optics and photonics, especially after fusion ignition was achieved at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF).

To help expand the educational pipeline with a coordinated nationwide effort, members of LLNL’s NIF and Photon Science (NIF&PS) directorate organized a workshop earlier this year that brought together optics and photonics researchers, educators, and consultants from across the country. As a result, attendees agreed to form an alliance named OPEN (Optics and Photonics Education Network), a national effort to share resources, best practices, and funding solutions to help sustainably grow the field.

“What the summit accomplished was to establish the need for this community to come together to help each other push optics and photonics education forward,” said NIF&PS Workforce Manager Zhi Liao, who helped organize the Optics School Summit in January. “We are now working on defining a broader mission, goals, and how to organize ourselves going forward.”

This was the second consecutive Optics School Summit, which brought together representatives from five universities and four community colleges that have existing programs for the science and engineering of light, including lasers, optical materials, imaging, and fiber optics. The hybrid workshop was held in person and by teleconference during the SPIE Photonics West convention in San Francisco in January.

NIF, the world’s most energetic laser system, is a prime example of how inertial confinement fusion (ICF) relies on sophisticated laser and optical technologies. NIF has more than 30,000 optical components that can amplify laser pulses about 20,000 billion times to more than 2 megajoules of ultraviolet laser energy.

To date, NIF is the only place on earth where fusion ignition in a laboratory has been achieved, a feat that is helping modernize the nation’s nuclear deterrent while also providing key scientific advances that inform efforts to develop future inertial fusion energy plants.

The scientific proof that NIF provided has helped spark the demand for more workers. The U.S. Department of Labor projected that by 2032, there will be about 10,000 job openings in the field of photonics. The United Kingdom alone has estimated that the fusion workforce would need to increase by 3,000 people within five years and 7,000 within 10 years.

Liao organized last year’s summit after realizing, from talking with the small but nationally dispersed community of optics and photonics students and educators, that they were tackling similar issues of recruiting and engagement. “I thought maybe if I could get them all in the same room to talk to each other, maybe we could solve some of these together,” Liao said.

Word of the success of last year’s summit quickly spread, with more stakeholders asking to join this year. “Everyone was waiting for an opportunity for the community to come together,” he said.

Brian Anderson, dean of the University of Arizona’s James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences, said his program has added about 60 undergraduate students in the last couple of years, nearly doubling the enrollment increase from previous years. This growth reflects a successful optics outreach effort that Wyant College employs in Southern Arizona.

“So, it is at least growing, but clearly, that’s still not nearly enough for the workforce needs,” Anderson said.

He noted that more continuity is needed to sustain recruiting efforts to the optics program, which would involve more inter-collegiate cooperation among educators. “I absolutely would love to work with anybody in any capacity on any of this,” Anderson said. “Collaboration is essential and I’m all for it.”

Thomas Brown, director of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, said his program has about 350 students. It was established a century ago, “and photonics wasn’t even a word then, so it’s wonderful to see an expanding community like this,” he said.

But to expand further, he said, there needs to be an effort to reach out to college admissions counselors. “They’re looking for music students and history students and everything else, and often optics sort of falls into the background,” Brown said. “Our main challenge sometimes is recruiting students after they’ve come to campus.”

Also, there needs to be “more direct outreach to high school guidance counselors and science teachers so that people actually know that there’s such a thing as a really productive career in optics and photonics,” he said.

LLNL physicist Patrick Poole, workforce lead for LLNL’s Livermore Institute for Fusion Technology (LIFT), noted that building a fusion energy future will require a broad range of job, including optical engineers, laser technologists, diagnostics specialists, precision manufacturers, control engineers, and technicians.

“We’re at the research and design phase of fusion power plant,” Poole said. “You've got many different job possibilities specifically for fusion power plants, Yes, it's plasma physicists, but it's lots of optics, every other engineering you can think of, and then trade skills and even the health businesses and policy experts.”

Launched in 2025, LIFT is an outward-facing institute at LLNL intended to strengthen connections across education, workforce development, and the broader fusion community.

LIFT hosted an inertial fusion energy (IFE) “winter school” at UCLA in December, with 40 students attending lectures and demonstrations on target physics, laser-plasma interactions, high energy density science, and more. LIFT also had 120 participants for an IFE Starfire Fusion course, with 12 lectures in six weeks, with another 10-week iteration planned for this spring.

To make optics and photonics a more visible career path that stands out from standard science and engineering courses, workshop attendees discussed the need for a nationwide effort of initiatives such as more hands-on workshops at community colleges, increasing student internship opportunities, and engaging high school and college science teachers as “ambassadors” to recruit for optics and photonics fields of study.

Mike McKee, of the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL) at the University of Central Florida’s College of Optics and Photonics, said he’s spent years talking up optics and photonics to students, but knows he can’t reach everyone by himself. McKee, who is CREOL’s associate director for Academic Support Services, said his program has about 200 students, many of whom learned about optics and photonics only after they enrolled at UCF.

“The challenge that we all have is that most of the students are in the program because I was in front of them going ‘blah, blah, blah, it's cool, photonics, right?’ ” McKee said. “But if I get hit by a speeding beer truck, then there's a problem. We really need to have a sustained system.”

A few years ago, he sought to make optics and photonics more visible in pop culture, like forensic science is because of popular TV crime series like “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

“So, I sent an email to the producers of “Star Trek: Discovery” and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about putting a photonics engineer on board the starship Enterprise?’ ” he said. While the message attracted interest from a producer who graduated from UCF, nothing came of it.

CREOL, however, has begun a series of workshops for public high school science teachers from several counties around the Orlando, Florida, area. The hands-on photonics activities turn teachers into ambassadors who can influence potential students about optics and photonics now and for years to come.

“You get these engaged teachers and they will talk about it all the time, and they will have these random conversations with their students,” McKee said. “It’s already paying off. I have had students contact me about interest in the program.”

At Las Positas College in Livermore, LLNL optical engineer Trent Brendel and physics professor Jennifer Siders piloted an eight-week laser optics workshop last summer (see “Las Positas College, LLNL offer Laser Optics Workshop”). Offered through the college’s community education program, the course did not offer grades, exams, or credit, but provided practical lab work and foundational optics concepts to students who were motivated to learn.

The workshop drew 30 participants from multiple backgrounds, including LLNL employees, student interns, Las Positas College students, and community members.

“We had some people who had hands-on experience with optics, we had some who had never touched an optical component before,” Brendel said. “The thing that brought everyone together was an interest in hands-on experiences with optics, not just sitting in a lecture, but getting to work with optics on a table.”

Brendel and Siders received positive feedback about the course, which showed the potential for recruiting more students to the field. Brendel said they are planning to do more workshops and are working to restart an accredited laser technology degree program at Las Positas College.

“Everyone wanted to be there,” Siders said. “They were all so excited about learning this content, and that was so nice. I really enjoyed teaching this class.”

This summit is the first national effort of its kind focused on college-level optics and photonics education. Planning is already under way for future meetings to continue this vital partnership and to maintain NIF&PS and LLNL leadership in this critical area.

More information:

Keys to Our Success: Optics

“New Book Documents Optics Innovations That Were Integral to Ignition,” NIF & Photon Science News, September 9, 2025

“Ride the Optics Recycle Loop with the Big Ideas Lab Podcast,” NIF & Photon Science News, March 5, 2025

“NIF’s Optics Meet the Demands of Increased Laser Energy,” NIF & Photon Science News, March 29, 2023

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