Researchers:
Professor Arka Majumdar (PI)
Shane Colburn, graduate student, materials science and engineering
Alan Zhan, graduate student, physics
As people age, their eyesight almost always gets worse. According to the Vision Council of America, approximately 75 percent of adults use some sort of vision correction. But for a patient, buying new glasses every time their vision gets a little blurrier is costly. At the same time, keeping glasses with a prescription that isn’t quite right can cause headaches and other forms of mild discomfort. To fix this, two physicists are developing a pair of smart, vision-corrective eyeglasses. The glasses use a lens, thinner than a human hair, that has a wide range of tunable focal lengths. The user can adjust these focal lengths electronically. A single pair of glasses can thus accommodate a range of eye powers.