FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MAY 6, 1998

REPORT PREDICTS OPTICS REVOLUTION

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- A new report by a committee of the National Research Council has predicted that harnessing the properties of light will lead to a technology revolution having a pervasive impact on life in the next century.

This dramatic vision, and recommendations to help the nation's research community maximize the potential of optical science and engineering, was to be previewed here today (May 6) by Charles V. Shank, Director of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the International Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/IQEC).

Shank was chair of the Research Council’s Committee on Optical Science and Engineering, a distinguished group of academic and industry leaders which spent three years undertaking a comprehensive assessment of the field of optics -- its progress over the last decade, its vision of the future, and its technological opportunities. The result, Harnessing Light: Optical Science and Engineering for the 21st Century, will be available from National Academy Press in mid-May.

Dr. Shank, in summarizing the report's conclusions, described optics as a critical enabler for technology that promises to revolutionize the fields of communications, medicine, energy efficiency, defense, manufacturing, and the frontiers of science into the next century. Since the development of the first laser in 1960, optics has impacted the global economy in countless ways, in fiber-optic communications, manufacturing, and imaging.

"There are about 5,000 optics-related companies with a financial impact of more than $50 billion annually," he said. "But that number is insignificant compared to what optics has spawned as an enabler. An investment of a few hundred million dollars in optical-fiber technology has leveraged a trillion-dollar worldwide communications revolution."

And that is only the beginning. The report envisions major advances in telecommunications, in disease diagnosis and therapy, in electric lighting efficiency, in semiconductor manufacturing, and in defense surveillance and guidance systems, to name a few.

These developments will change the world in ways that are hard to imagine, Shank said, but to realize the vision will take a reordering of research priorities, more coordination among agencies and industries engaged in optical science, and federal leadership in focusing efforts of the research community.

"Optics is an extraordinarily strong and dynamic field," Dr. Shank said. "In a few important areas, however, action is needed to overcome barriers that might slow the present pace of rapid progress -- to break down the barriers to individual home access to high-speed fiber-optic communications, for example, or to take full advantage of the potential of non-invasive optical methods for medical monitoring and diagnosis."

Some of the key areas identified by the COSE report for particular focus of optics research in the coming years are:

Information technology and telecommunications: Around the world, optical fiber is being installed at a rate of 1,000 meters every second, comparable to the speed of a Mach 2 aircraft. By the year 2005, about 600,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable will cross the oceans, enough to encircle the Earth 15 times. It will eventually be feasible to extend these networks all the way to the end-user in individual homes, resulting in high-speed data and video transmission more ubiquitous than the telephone. But many research and manufacturing capabilities will have to advance a hundred-fold to achieve this vision.

The report recommends that Congress "challenge industry and the federal regulatory agencies to ensure the rapid development and deployment of a broadband fiber-to-the-home information infrastructure."

Health care and the life sciences: Building on present capabilities for laser surgery and non-invasive diagnostic methods, optics can help realize the potential for laboratory and clinical health care methodologies. In the future, for example, people could have personal health monitors that can evaluate the optical properties of their blood and tissue. But, according to the report, fundamental science that would lead to such innovations is presently incomplete, and the disease-oriented structure of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) "does not encourage the growth of biomedical optical technology programs."

The report suggests mechanisms to encourage increased public and private investment in the development of non-invasive optical monitoring of basic body chemistries, as well as a stronger focus in this area by the NIH.

Optical sensing, lighting, and energy: Lighting accounts for almost 20 percent of total annual electricity use. New lamps and light sources could reduce consumer electricity bills in the United States by tens of billions of dollars a year, according to the report. These lighting efficiencies can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, along with advanced solar cells, reduce the energy it takes to illuminate the world.

The committee recommends that various public and private agencies coordinate efforts to create a single program for lighting efficiency, with the goal of reducing America's consumption of electricity for lighting by a factor of two over the next decade, thus saving $10 billion to $20 billion a year in energy costs.

National defense: Optics continue to play an indispensable role in defense programs and promise even greater capabilities in the areas of weapons targeting and detection of biological and chemical warfare agents. The report suggests that the Department of Defense needs to make a greater investment in research areas of photonics, sensors, and high-powered tunable lasers to gain maximum defense competitive advantage, and in low-cost manufacturing of precision components.

The report recommends a larger effort in the development of ultraprecise optical lithography in industrial manufacturing, possibly through a government-led consortium. It also urges that the National Institute of Standards and Technology become a leader in the development of international optics standards.

The committee encourages multiple agencies to support optics as a cross-cutting initiative, similar to recent efforts in high-performance computing. And it recommends that the National Science Foundation develop an agency-wide initiative to support multidisciplinary research and education in optics.

"We expect the field of optics to become a discipline," the report concludes, "as computer science has over the past few decades, and to become recognized as such in educational institutions around the world."

The study was funded by the Department of Defense, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The National Research Council is the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, non-profit institution that provides science advice under a Congressional charter. The study was overseen by the NRC’s Board on Physics and Astronomy and the National Materials Advisory Board.

Other members of the committee include Aram Mooradian, Vice Chair; David Attwood, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Gary Bjorklund, Optical Networks, Inc.; Robert Byer, Stanford; Michael Campbell, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Steven Chu, Stanford; Thomas Deutsch, Massachusetts General Hospital; Elsa Garmire, Dartmouth; Alastair Glass, Lucent Technologies; John Greivenkamp, University of Arizona; and Arthur Guenther, Sandia National Laboratories.

Also, Thomas S. Hartwick, TRW (retired); Robin Hochstrasser, University of Pennsylvania; Erich Ippen, MIT; Kristina Johnson, University of Colorado; Dennis Killinger, University of South Florida; Herwig Kogelnik, Lucent Technologies; Robert Shannon, University of Arizona; Glenn T. Sincerbox, University of Arizona; Brian Thompson, University of Rochester; and Eli Yablonovitch, UCLA. Thomas Baer, Biometric Imaging Systems, was a special consultant. The National Research Council staff, headed by Don Shapero, Director of the Board on Physics and Astronomy, included Robert Schafrik, Dan Morgan, and Sandra Hyland.

Harnessing Light: Optical Science and Engineering for the 21st Century can be ordered through the National Academy Press, 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Lockbox 285, Washington, D.C. 20055, or by calling 800-624-6242.

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