A popular optical engineering course equips students with technical and professional skills while putting them on the radar of industry-connected alumni.
教学大纲
选择544: 高级镜头设计
教练: 朱莉宾利，光学教授
In addition to working together on a group design project, 学生学习相机镜头的设计, 红外目标, 目镜, 显微镜下的目标, 变焦镜头, 反射系统. Other topics include tolerancing, sensitivity analysis, and Monte Carlo analysis. Bentley also teaches an introductory companion class—OPT 444: Lens Design—each spring.
澳门威尼斯人网上赌场 教授 朱莉宾利 gave the nearly 40 undergraduate and graduate optics students enrolled in 选择544: 高级镜头设计 two daunting tasks. 首先，设计最好的变焦镜头 美国宇航局的木卫二快船任务 来探索木星的卫星. Then, design the ideal zoom lens to record the mission as it blasts off into space.
Bentley’s students worked on the project collaboratively and competitively throughout the fall semester. They broke into teams to explore the myriad factors that would influence the final lens designs, 包括不同的视野, 传感器, 包装的限制, 光子预算. Some students helped build tools in programming languages like Python and MATLAB that were first developed in the class more than 10 years ago and each cohort improves upon. Others conducted market research to see what available products could feasibly meet the project requirements.
The result was that the students learned as much about project management, 团队合作, 以及通信，就像他们对光学的澳门威尼斯人网上赌场一样. 乔安娜·罗森布鲁斯，24岁, 谁是班级的首席项目经理, found that she loves leading in that role and studied Bentley’s style closely.
“She’s very particular in a good way about wanting everything to be correct, and that really went into my project management style,罗森布鲁斯说. “It’s pretty clear when things are wrong and running behind time, so I had checks along the process to make sure no one was getting off track. I learned from her teaching style that if you get a little off track, 你可以完全在杂草中, 所以通过让每个人都动起来, 我们都能找到一个成功的设计.”
Bentley started teaching the course annually nearly 20 years ago with fewer than 10 students enrolled. 托马斯•布朗他是 光学澳门威尼斯人网上赌场所, says the course has grown to become one of the institute’s most popular, with Bentley teaching her largest cohort ever in the fall. He notes that everyone from third-year undergraduates to PhD students line up to take the class and that it poses a challenge for all.
“It’s one of the few courses where they really can compete on equal footing,” says Brown. “The undergraduates and graduates take all of the lectures together and put their best foot forward on the project.”
Examples of past projects include exploring lens designs for non-destructive art analysis (2013), underwater zoom cameras for observing coral bleaching (2021), and zoom cameras for canopy animal photography in Africa (2022).
This year’s project culminated in a marathon four-hour presentation where the small groups outlined the constraints of the project, 每位学生都展示了他们最终的镜头设计.
尽管这门课要求很高, Bentley keeps the mood balanced with her trademark sense of humor, peppering constructive feedback with lighthearted jokes. During a pizza break midway through final presentations, she had optics senior Samuel Erdogan ’24 sing one of his parody songs based on Bentley’s classes—which range from “Lens Design” set to the tune of “Silver Bells,到“对不起。. Bentley，”这是Outkast的“Ms . Bentley”的一个转折. 杰克逊.”
正, 努力拼搏的心态似乎具有传染性, and the students know that if they can excel at the challenging class, 他们可能会引起潜在雇主的注意.
“We had about 50 people from 30 different companies in the 光学澳门威尼斯人网上赌场所’ 工业协会 program who listened to the final presentation,” says Bentley. “The audience includes former optics students who’ve gone on to work as lens designers at great places. People I know through industry are very interested in these students and get to watch how they perform. We had a bunch of people from NASA as well as Garmin, Optikos, Excelitas, and others. Our students are excited because they want to go get jobs at these companies.”
