Bringing light to engineering
Learn how to harness light and its energy to create high-tech solutions.
From cancer detection to faster computing, lasers and optics improve today’s world. As a student majoring in electrical engineering with laser and optics, you will learn from faculty at the forefront of innovation.
We are part of LaserNetUS, a network of facilities operating high-power lasers. You will have access to cutting-edge tools such as the ALEPH laser, one of the world’s most intense lasers developed at CSU.
“This is our tool, like a carpenter has a hammer,” Professor Rocca said as he showed Senator Michael Bennet how the laser beam gets amplified as it passes through various crystals. “This is our hammer.”
Concentration Highlights
You will learn: This concentration offers you a foundation in electrical engineering with specialized training in lasers and photonics. You will learn how lasers enable technologies of the future, from advanced medical devices to fiber optics for global communications.
Real-world examples of lasers and optics: Potential applications range from emissions and environmental monitoring to improved cancer detection to dramatically efficient computing.
Career opportunities: The future is bright for laser science – an industry that is thriving in our state. Many Colorado photonics technologies companies offer internships that lead to employment opportunities.
Coursework
Featured Laboratories
Laboratory for Advanced Lasers and Photonics
Single Molecule Biophysics Lab
Signal Processing & Nonlinear Microscopy Lab
Bartels Lab
Laboratory for Advanced Lasers and Photonics
Our group is international recognized for the development of advance ultra-high intensity solid state lasers that are used as drivers of table-top X-Ray and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lasers. The group demonstrated the first table-top soft x-ray laser. These lasers have made possible systems that can image, pattern, and probe chemical composition at the nanoscale.
Single Molecule Biophysics Lab
Our lab focuses on the architecture of mammalian cells. The main expertise of the team is in single-molecule biophysics experiments at the nanometer scale. We place particular emphasis on the actin-based cytoskeleton and its role in the dynamic organization of the plasma membrane.
Signal Processing & Nonlinear Microscopy Lab
We develop advanced microscopy techniques to provide contrast between cell and tissue components that are difficult to resolve with traditional stains and dyes. We do this by leveraging the physics of light-matter interactions, incorporating nonlinear optics and real-time digital signal processing techniques. We are particularly interested in FPGA-based signal processing, sub-picosecond time-resolved optical interactions such as transient absorption, and applications of deep learning to regression problems like signal estimation and denoising.
Bartels Lab
The research that we do in our group is highly multidisciplinary, drawing on optics, chemistry, biological, and engineering principles. Our group is working to unravel fundamental questions concerning the interaction of femtosecond light pulses with molecules to induce coherent motion in specific degrees of freedom of the molecules. We are seeking to understand the ro-vibrational dynamics of molecules excited by femtosecond laser pulses.
Join Us.
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Colorado State University is built on innovation, creativity, and impact.