General Information

The Ohio State University is a recognized center for research in spectroscopy. The Physics and Chemistry Departments here have long been recognized to be leading players in the development of basic spectroscopic techniques and the analysis and understanding of molecular spectra. Annually, without interruption for over 50 years, Ohio State has hosted the largest basic spectroscopic meeting in the world, the OSU International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy. Recently the Department of Mechanical Engineering has been extremely active in using spectroscopic diagnostics to study flows, plasmas, and energy transfer. These developments are typical of an ever-growing number of spectroscopic applications to problems of considerable economic and societal importance.

The role of the Spectroscopy Institute is to bring together at OSU the appliers of spectroscopy with the creators of the underlying science. We expect this to be of benefit to the students of Ohio State and the citizens of Ohio and beyond. The education of the students of the Chemical Physics Program and the associated Departments is benefited by the Institute's support of special courses, e.g. "Frontiers in Spectroscopy." and the strengthening and broadening of the research environment in spectroscopy.

Ohio State, via the Spectroscopy Institute, aims to be a world leader in the development of basic spectroscopy, whether frequency or time domain, and its application to a variety of problems ranging from engineering to environmental to biological to astrophysical. In addition the Institute accepts the obligation to promote the wide-spread dissemination of spectroscopic knowledge. The OSU International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy represents an important part of that effort. The Institute in cooperation with the OSU Library system has also created the Molecular Spectroscopy Archives. This is an on-line resource providing access to abstracts from past Symposia and supplemental spectroscopic data from the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy.


Institute Home Page