Embedded Files
About Course
Course Description: Optical systems, Gaussian optics, aberrations, radiometry, sources, detectors, optical engineering.
Course Number: OPTI 502L
Course Type: Graduate Course
Units: 1
Semester Offered: Fall
Days and Times: Lecture session (Friday 2:00 - 2:50 pm); lab sessions (various dates and times, usually ~3 hours per session on Mon and Tue.)
Lecture Room: Meinel 432
Lab: Meinel 436
Distance Course: No
Wyant College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona
News Feed
New
Upcoming Schedule
October 9 (Friday): Regular lecture session with Heejoo covering Lab 5.
October 12 (Monday) / October 13 (Tuesday): Regular Lab 5 sessions will be held as scheduled.
October 16 (Friday): There will be no regular class meeting. Instead, each final project team should arrange its own meeting at a time and location of your choice to conduct an initial discussion and planning session for your final project. Please submit your lab notes by the end of the day. (any digital format such as a PDF or image of a scanned note)
October 19 (Monday) / October 20 (Tuesday): There will be no lab sessions due to Industrial Affiliates Week.
October 23 (Friday): We will resume our regular lecture schedule with Daewook, covering Lab 6.
Please also note that Industrial Affiliates Week begins on October 19. We strongly encourage you to participate in the events and engage with visiting companies and professionals. This is an excellent opportunity to learn about industry trends, technologies, and potential career paths while expanding your professional network.
Old
Lab notebooks will be collected and reviewed three times during the semester:
October 16, November 13, December 4
You are welcome to work ahead and complete your reports before the collection dates. However, please note that official feedback and grading will be provided only during these scheduled review periods.
There will be no lab sessions on August 31st and September 1st. See you on Friday, September 4th at 2:00 PM in Room 432 for the Lab 1 lecture.
We hope your semester begins well with exciting classes and awesome colleagues on campus. It is great to see you all in the OPTI502L class this fall semester 2026! It will be a wonderful class with lots of exciting optical engineering and science experiments and hands-on labs! Welcome to the class!
Grading Policy
The grade for this course is based on your lab notebook (75%), which requires lab and lecture session attendance, and a final group presentation (25%). The notebooks will be graded on the basis of completeness of the lab write-up and answering the questions. Lab notebooks will be collected during the semester and graded. Also, we will always be happy to look at your notebooks throughout the term.
About Instructor
Daewook Kim is an associate professor of Optical Sciences and Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has been working in the optical engineering field for more than 10 years, mainly focusing on very large astronomical optics such as the 25 m in diameter Giant Magellan Telescope primary mirrors. His main research area covers the precision freeform optics fabrication and various metrology topics such as interferometric test systems using computer generated holograms, direct curvature measurements, and dynamic deflectometry systems. He is currently a chair/co-chair of the Optical Manufacturing and Testing conference (SPIE) and the Optical Fabrication and Testing conference (OSA). He is a Senior member of OSA and SPIE and has been serving as an associate editor for the journal Optics Express.
Heejoo Choi is an associate research professor of Optical Sciences and will co-teach Daewook and TA for the lab setups. He is an expert in optical design, metrology and engineering area and worked on various large ground and space telescope and imaging systems.
Peng Su, Ping Zhou and James Burge are also helping for planning and teaching the 502L class.
Class Simulator Links
Telescope aberration simulator: https://webs.optics.arizona.edu/gsmith/Hubble.html (by Prof. Greg Smith)
Prof. Smith's phase shifting interferometer simulator
Contacts
Daewook Kim: dkim@optics.arizona.edu
Heejoo Choi: heejoochoi@arizona.edu
TA: Avion Lowery (alowery1@arizona.edu) and Nathan Queen (nqueen@arizona.edu)
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse