Chunyu Zhao is a PhD candidate at the Optical Sciences Center, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA. Chunyu was selected by an international committee of academic and industrial specialists in optical design. The committee members are from the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Australia, Finland, Sweden, and Poland. The selection criteria for the scholarship are: The Scholarship is to be awarded to a student of optical design. The candidate must meet the entry criteria for the chosen course of study or research. The candidate must have at least one year after the award to completion of their chosen course of study. The candidate must submit a summary of his or her academic background and interest in pursuing training or research in optical design.

Chunyu’s academic background is extensive. He received a bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics with a specialty in Optics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. After graduation he worked in industry for several years before applying to Temple University in Philadelphia, where he was accepted into the Physics Department’s Master’s program. While at Temple, he became familiar with optics education programs at U.S. universities, applied to the Optical Sciences Center, and was accepted into the PhD program as a new student in 1997. He has taken courses directly related to optical design, such as Introduction to Optical Design, Introduction to Aberration Theory, Advanced Aberration Theory, Lens Design, Optical Shop Practices, and Y,Ybar Workshop. Chunyu is currently working on his dissertation, entitled "The Criteria for Correcting all the Quadratic Field-Dependent Aberrations."

His advisor is Professor James Burge. "Dr. Burge is a very experienced optical designer and a great mentor. In addition to Professor Burge, I also appreciate the assistance of Professor Jose Sasian and Professor Roland Shack. They are always willing to help work out problems that I come across and I learn new things every time I talk to them."

Chunyu’s interest in optical design began only a few years ago at the Optical Sciences Center when he discovered the story of H. Dennis Taylor’s invention of the Cooke Triplet. "It is such an elegant design," he said. "I set my goal of becoming an optical design expert that day. I am studying aberration theories and am attempting to understand how aberrations originate and how to control them. It’s challenging and exciting, but I am convinced that mastering theory is the key to successful optical design. Even with all of the excellent design software on the market now, optical design is still a knowledge-intensive business and, because optical systems are becoming more and more complicated, I think it always will be."

"At the Optical Sciences Center, I’ve been fortunate to be involved in several projects, including an exciting project for Jim Burge: building an interferometer that was used to test the prototype for NGST, the Next Generation Space Telescope. Other work included developing a theory for correcting aberrations and a related project involved designing well-corrected all aspheric-surface systems under the guidance of that theory. My current project is my dissertation research."

Chunyu’s dissertation is focused on the development of a criterion for correcting all the quadratic field-dependent aberrations of an optical system. "The criterion for an axially symmetric system has been derived and involves only the properties of the rays originating from the on-axis object point, but it predicts off-axis aberrations with quadratic field dependence. In this regard, it is analogous to the Sine Condition and its use in predicting off-axis aberrations with linear field dependence. If an optical system forms a stigmatic image of the on-axis object point, then all orders of spherical aberrations with no field dependence are absent. I call this the constant optical path difference, or OPD condition. Because the OPD condition, the Sine Condition, and the criterion correct aberrations of all orders of pupil dependence, the three conditions can be combined to design optical systems with very high numerical aperture and moderate field of view which perform perfectly. So far, I have designed a four-surface system that satisfies all three conditions to prove the concept of imposing them in optical design. As far as I know, the result of this research is new to the optical design community. It has applications to high-resolution system design, but its full potential is still unknown."

Chunyu said, "I’m very honoured to be chosen to receive the Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship. The application process was a great opportunity to have my work examined by optical design experts and it is incredibly encouraging to be selected to receive this award. I would like to thank The Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship Committee for this generous scholarship and HP Labs for the laptop and printer."