Faculty

Short Biography

Brian Kruschwitz received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1992, where he developed an interest in optical systems while working on lidar remote sensing of the atmosphere while interning at NASA Langley Research Center. He earned a PhD in optics in 1997 from the Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, under the supervision of Professor Thomas Brown, and performed his thesis research on complex-coupled distributed feedback semiconductor lasers. He then spent six years as a senior research scientist at Eastman Kodak Co., where he worked on a diverse array of optical systems ranging from telecine film scanners to Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) devices and laser projection displays, and in the process earned the CTO Patent Award for having 20 U.S. patents issued. Since 2004, Dr. Kruschwitz has been a laser system scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, where he participated in the development, integration, commissioning, and operation of the OMEGA EP laser system. In 2009, he was promoted to senior scientist and became the leader of the OMEGA EP System Science Group, and in 2015 received a secondary appointment to pursue teaching as an associate professor in the Institute of Optics. In 2018, Dr. Kruschwitz assumed leadership of Laser System Science for both the 60-beam OMEGA laser and the petawatt-class OMEGA EP laser system.