A student ofMool Gupta, Matt Julian, attended The International School on Lasers in Materials Science conference which takes place in Venice, Italy every two years, and has been held since 2008. It is sponsored by IEEE Photonics Society, Springer Scientific Publishing Group, and Politecnico Milano. Matt received 2nd place for the Roger Kelly Award for Best Poster and Oral Presentation in the “Rising Stars†category, which includes PhD students in their 3rd year or higher and post-docs. His poster/talk was entitled “High Efficiency, Broadband Diffractive Lenses by Laser Direct Writingâ€. As a UVA graduate student Matt is carrying out research at the National Institute of Aerospace/NASA Langley Research Center.