The Karlsruhe School of Optics & Photonics was established in 2006 as a public funded project by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the scope of the Excellence Initiative by the German Federal and State Goverments to promote Science and Research at German universities.
KSOP is the first graduate school at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Along with the KIT and the Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN), KSOP carried off the status 'Elite-Universität' for Karlsruhe.
Optics and photonics are driven by fascinating scientific challenges, unexpected breakthroughs, and by a more than hundred billion € annual market. Moreover, as enabling technologies, optics and photonics drive other disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, as well as electrical and mechanical engineering. Unfortunately, Germany – like most other countries – has had a substantial shortcoming regarding education in this field. Thus, the “Karlsruhe School of Optics & Photonics” (KSOP) envisions a novel combined masters program (funded by the KIT) and a Ph.D. program (funded by the excellence initiative). It is supported by 12 professors and more than 10 other principal investigators from all of the above mentioned disciplines from KIT and partner institutions. Together, they cover the research areas of KSOP: Photonic Materials & Devices, Advanced Spectroscopy, Biomedical Photonics and Optical Systems.
