A new Graduate Traineeship Program in Ultrafast Optical Sciences will be established. The specific focus of the five traineeships will be on the University of Michigan's newly created Center for Ultrafast Optical Science (CUOS), an NSF Science and Technology Center created to enhance the nation's competitiveness in high-speed photonics and pulsed laser optics. This is a field where a well-documented demand exists for highly trained personnel who will lead the burgeoning revolution in optical science and technology. CUOS is inherently interdisciplinary in scope and draws on faculty and resources in several departments: Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry. These multidisciplinary components are integrated via a common emphasis on the utilization of high peak power lasers for new areas of fundamental science, and for technological applications that exploit the special characteristics of ultrafast light pulses. This comprehensive and innovative program addresses several crucial needs in graduate education: it aims to increase the number of American undergraduates going on to PhD studies in areas of national importance, it actively engages and nurtures underrepresented groups in the research of the Center, via a novel outreach initiative funded by University matching funds, and it addresses important issues of retention and time-to- degree by providing pre-enrollment summer research internships.
