Lasers: Advancing Security, Health and Justice

Invitation

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the invention of the laser, an occasion that highlights the potential of the federal government and the private sector to work together to provide technologies that advance our national goals. Over the last five decades, the laser has become an integral part of our everyday life and can be found everywhere from high-tech research applications to scanners at the grocery store. Lasers are also used to take accurate measurements and characterize materials, and new technologies are being developed for first responders in the field, forensic measurements, and methods to identify pathogens in foods and other consumer products. This briefing pulls together experts from these areas to discuss new laser technologies relating to a wide range of national goals, from food safety to explosives detection.

• List of Terms/Acronyms Used at Briefing
• Laserfest
• Future Applications of Lasers
• Laser Innovation
• “INL laser research could help U.S. respond to terror attack,” Idaho National Laboratory
• “Army researchers explore laser detection techniques,” June 4, 2010, Army Research Laboratory
• “Collaborative research seeks to create bacterial fingerprint system,” July 22, 2009, Wayne State University
• “Moving Physics Beyond the Vacuum,” Winter 2008 CLAS Notes, Wayne State University
• “Laser-Based Identification of Pathenogenic Bacteria,” Steven Rehse, The Physics Teacher, Vol. 47, March 2009
• “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States,” 2009, National Academies
  Press Release, February 18, 2009
  Report Summary