Collaboration and excellence are the keys to educating photonics professionals

I interviewed Professor Xi-Cheng Zhang, director of the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester because it is a leading optical center that has made a major impact on the optics and photonics community. Xi-Cheng Zhang is the M. Parker Givens Professor, and he also holds professorships and honorary appointments at several other universities because he is an internationally recognized scientist and a leader in terahertz science and technology. He was chosen to be the director of the Institute of Optics in 2012 after a successful 20-year career at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where he founded the Center for THz Research and was co-founder of Zomega Terahertz (East Greenbush, NY). A prolific author and speaker, Dr. Zhang is a Fellow of AAAS, APS, IEEE, OSA, and SPIE, and is the recipient of many honors and awards.