Polarized Light and Optical Systems

Russell Chipman, PhD, is professor of optical sciences at the University of Arizona and a visiting professor at the Center for Optics Research and Education (CORE), Utsunomiya University, Japan. He teaches courses in polarized light, polarimetry, and polarization optical design at both universities. Prof. Chipman received his BS in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and his MS and PhD in optical sciences from the University of Arizona. He is a fellow of The Optical Society (OSA) and The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). He received SPIE's 2007 G.G. Stokes Award for research in Polarimetry and OSA's Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert Burley Award for Optical Engineering in 2015. He is a co-investigator on NASA/JPL's Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols, a polarimeter scheduled for launch into earth orbit around 2021 for monitoring aerosols and pollution in metropolitan areas. He is also developing UV and IR polarimeter breadboards and analysis methods for other NASA exoplanet and remote sensing missions. He has recently focused on developing the Polaris-M polarization ray tracing code, which analyzes optical systems with anisotropic materials, electro-optic modulators, diffractive optical elements, polarized scattered light, and many other effects. His hobbies include hiking, Japanese language, rabbits, and music.


Wai-Sze Tiffany Lam, PhD, was born and raised in Hong Kong. She is currently an optical scientist in Facebook's Oculus Research.? She received her BS in optical engineering and her MS and PhD in optical sciences from the University of Arizona. In her research she developed robust optical modeling and polarization simulation for birefringent and optically active optical components, components with stress birefringence, the aberrations in crystal retarders and polarizers, and the modeling of liquid crystal cells. Many of these algorithms form the basis of the commercial ray tracing code, Polaris-M, marketed by Airy Optics.


Garam Young, PhD, graduated with a BS in physics from Seoul National University in Korea and received her doctorate from University of Arizona's College of Optical Sciences, also earning Valedictorian and Outstanding Graduate Student honors. She then developed polarization features and optimization features for CODE V and LightTools with Synopsys in Pasadena, and she currently works as an optical and illumination engineer in the Bay area. Her husband and daughter keep her busy at home.