SPIE and UNC Charlotte Launch $1M Doctoral Scholarship Fund in Optical Science

• The SPIE Emerging Innovators Scholarship will support two PhD students in UNC Charlotte’s Optical Science and Engineering program.
• The $1-million endowment combines a $500K SPIE gift with a $500K match from the UNC Charlotte Foundation.

SPIE and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte announced a $1 million endowed fund to support doctoral research in optics and photonics. The SPIE Emerging Innovators in Optical Science and Engineering Scholarship will fund two PhD students in the university’s Optical Science and Engineering program with a particular focus on rapidly growing fields such as nanophotonics, quantum optics, biomedical imaging, and advanced optical materials.

The fund is the result of a $500,000 contribution from SPIE, matched by the UNC Charlotte Foundation. This is the first endowed scholarship of its kind for the program and is part of the SPIE Endowment Matching Program, which was established in 2019 to expand international research and education capacity in optics and photonics.

With this latest award, SPIE has contributed over $5.5 million through its matching program, creating more than $14 million in total endowment funding. According to SPIE CEO Kent Rochford, the scholarship recipients will help advance innovation in optical science across industry, academia, and government.

🌀 Tom’s Take:

Endowments like this seed the next generation of specialists in optics and photonics, two of the most critical domains driving spatial computing forward.

Source: Business Wire / SPIE