Caleb Gannon: 2018 Awardee
Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship
College of Optical Sciences
University of Arizona
The 2018 winner of the Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship award is Caleb Daniel Gannon. Caleb received a BS in Engineering Physics from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 2015, where he was honored as the Most Outstanding Engineering Physics Student in the graduating class. Caleb entered the PhD program at the College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, in the fall of 2015. He is currently in his third year of the PhD program at the College of Optical Sciences, working with Professor Rongguang Liang, a SPIE fellow and Associate Editor of Optica. Professor Liang comments on Caleb’s future: “His PhD research on optical design with deep learning will have a huge impact on future optical design.”
The 2018 Kidger Scholarship Award was presented to Caleb by Tina Kidger, Symposium Chair, at the SPIE Optical Systems Design Symposium, Frankfurt Fairgrounds, Frankfurt, Germany, 14 May 2018.
Research Highlights
European Optical Design Symposium 2018
Frankfurt, Germany
14 May 2018
Tina Kidger presents the Kidger Scholarship
award to
Caleb Gannon
Caleb’s thesis goals are to incorporate artificial intelligence with modern deep learning techniques in the design of optical components to develop high-level expert systems, bringing optical design into an easy-to-use format where anyone can create high-performing systems.
Specifically, Caleb hopes his efforts will provide: 1.) An AI for illumination lenses capable of reproducing the irradiance pattern of any input image for a given geometry. 2.) An AI for Imaging systems that can generate an optical system with the desired performance given mounting and space limitations. 3.) Generalization of the methods learned from these techniques to other applications within optical design, such as adaptive optics and diffractive grating design, in addition to investigating unsupervised learning techniques for AI self-training in these areas.
Updates
2020
Caleb is currently investigating methods for ultrafast ray-tracing of freeform optical surfaces defined using NURBS, and algorithms for optimizing those surfaces that take advantage of the accelerated speeds. I am also heavily exploring AI/generative algorithms for creating art, which I expect to provide insight for AI-driven optical design in the future