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Trends: Articles
NEW MEXICO LEADER IN OPTICS EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING
A rapidly growing New Mexico high tech field with good
job opportunities is optics/photonics. Technicians,
scientists, and engineers in this specialty apply optics
technology to a variety of applications in lasers,
microelectronics, telecommunications, electro-optical
systems, sensors, chemicals, biomedicine, astronomy,
nanotechnology, and other technical areas. Some of the
work is government defense based while others are in
scientific research, manufacturing, energy and the
environment.
Major employers include the Air Force Research
Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, Sandia and Los
Alamos National Laboratories, the University of New
Mexico, New Mexico Tech, New Mexico State, and White
Sands Missile Range. In the Albuquerque area there are a
number of private sector technical companies employing
these workers including Applied Technology Associates,
Wave Front Sciences, InLight Solutions, Boeing-SVS, CVI
Laser, Lumidigm, Zia Lasers, and SEA. Annual hiring
needs for workers with this background approach 500
statewide with half of that at Sandia Laboratories
alone. Starting wages for technicians is $15-20/hour.
Optics training is available in the Albuquerque area
through Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute (TVI)
which offers an associate degree in photonics
technology, and at the University of New Mexico which
offers a MS and PhD in Optical Science and Engineering
as well as a soon to start undergraduate program. A
middle/high school introductory/intern Photonics Academy
program is found in one in the Albuquerque Public
Schools West Mesa High School cluster area.
New Mexico offers a comprehensive complimentary optics
educational diversity through its three graduate
universities. UNM focuses on quantum optics, lasers, and
photonics, while New Mexico Tech in Socorro, 75 miles
south of Albuquerque offers a minors program in optical
science and engineering to students enrolled in physical
science and engineering programs emphasizing physical
optics in support of their Magdalena Ridge Observatory
and instrumentation specialization. New Mexico State
University, the land grant university of New Mexico in
Las Cruces, some 240 miles south of Albuquerque offers a
wide range of nanomaterials, photonics, and magnetism
courses in their optics and materials program.
Collectively these institutions offer many opportunities
for aspiring opticists.
Optics and photonics have been identified by the City of
Albuquerque in their Next Generation Economic Initiative
and the state is targeting optics-related growth in
their technology-based economic development plans.
For further information contact the New Mexico Optics
Industry Association at www.NMOIA.org or info@NMOIA.org.
DR. ARTHUR H. GUENTHER
Past President, International Commission for Optics
Center for High Technology Materials
University of New Mexico
1313 Goddard SE
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106
Office: 505 272-7003
FAX: 505 272-7801
e-mail: agun@chtm.unm.edu
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