Optical Research Associates of Pasadena, Calif., has announced the winners of its annual Student Optical Design Competition. The company presents awards totaling $4000 to graduate and undergraduate students who use its Code V or LightTools software to perform research in some area of optical design or engineering. The 2004 winners are:

Jeremy Rowlette and Claude Matalanis, doctoral candidates at Stanford University in California, who secured the top prize for their design of a 1003, 0.85 NA, diffraction-limited objective for through-silicon microscopy.

Matthew R. Bolcar, a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics in New York, for a sparse-aperture interferometric telescope.

Melanie Laurent and Regis Tessieres, master's degree candidates at the University of Arizona's Optical Sciences Center in Tucson, for a camera objective.

Michael Niemack, a doctoral candidate in the physics department of Princeton University in New Jersey, for the Atacama cosmology telescope and a measurement-based admission control receiver.
Christopher M. Supranowitz, a bachelor's degree candidate at the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics, for backward-compatible Blu-Ray and high-definition-DVD objectives for reading high-capacity DVDs.

Jen Watkinson, master's degree candidate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center in Troy, N.Y., for the optical design model of an LED headlamp.