Optical software maker Optical Research Associates (ORA) of Pasadena, Calif., announced it has selected the winners of its annual Student Optical Design Competition. The annual awards, which total $4000, are presented to students in North America working toward undergraduate or graduate degrees and who use the company's Code V or LightTools software to perform research in some area of optical design or engineering. Top awards were presented to Quan Wang and Chia-Yu Chen, PhD candidates at Stanford University, for their research into zoom lenses for cell phone cameras; and Rob Bates, who is pursuing a master's at the University of Arizona, for his project "200 Years in One Design: Landscape Lens to Modern Compact Camera." Also receiving awards were Ramzi Zahreddine, an undergraduate at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, for his design of a laser beam shaping system using spherical GRIN polymer lenses; and Xinye Lou, a PhD candidate at the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics, for his wide field of view head-mounted display for virtual reality.