Dedication and Celebration
for the Center for Adaptive Optics
at the University of California, Santa Cruz

The Center for Adaptive Optics received funding in November 1999 as a Science and Technology Center by the National Science Foundation (NSF). At the time the University of California, Santa Cruz also committed funds for a new building to house this Center. Planning for the building commenced immediately. An architect was hired and in conjunction with Center management a building designed that would provide discussion spaces to encourage interaction between occupants and a state of the art video conferencing facility to provide communications with the scientific community at large.

On June 21st 2002, the building was dedicated and opened to the public. Dr. Rita Colwell, Director of the National Science Foundation was the honored guest and featured speaker. Amongst her comments Dr. Colwell referred to the Center’s activities in astronomy and vision science saying that the center has fostered ``a striking convergence'' of two groups of scientists who rarely talked to each other before -- those who study the sky and those who study the eye."

Program
Photographs from the event