University of Rochester (Rochester, NY, USA) students Anthony Visconti and Brett Sternfield and University of Alabama in Huntsville (Hunstville, AL, USA) student Josh Walters have been named as the winners of the 2012 Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Optical Design Competition, an annual competition held by Synopsys (Mountain View, CA, USA).
The competition is open to students in North America working toward a bachelor's, master's, or doctorate degree who use Synopsys' CODE V or LightTools software to perform optical design and engineering research.
Visconti was recognized for his work examining how chalcogenide glasses can be used in lenses for passive athermalized infra red systems. For his part, Sternfield worked on a machine vision imaging system for autonomous robots, developing a method to improve a robot's ability to navigate a new environment and capture images using a fisheye lens. Lastly, Walters was praised for his efforts in modeling a multi-aperture lenslet array spectropolarimetic imager.
Synopsys' CODE V is used to model, analyze, optimize, and provide fabrication support for the development of optical systems for diverse applications, while LightTools is an optical engineering and design software product that supports virtual prototyping, simulation, optimization, and photorealistic renderings of illumination applications.
The Robert S. Hilbert Memorial Optical Design Competition was established in 2000 by Optical Research Associates (ORA), now the Optical Solutions Group at Synopsys, in honor of ORA's former president and chief executive officer.
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-- Dave Wilson, Vision Systems Design
