Laser scientist Eric Honea and San Jose State University physics professor, Gareth Williams, will explore how lasers operate and how they are used in common devices such as CD players and telecommunications equipment. This lecture incorporates several demonstrations of equipment to illustrate the key points of their talk. Rick Freeman, chair of the UC Davis Department of Applied Sciences, will give a brief presentation on new opportunities to earn an optics engineering degree at the UC Davis, Livermore campus. Speaker Bios Dr. Eric Honea has a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles and B.S. degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of California, Irvine. Before coming to LLNL, he was a postdoctoral member of the technical staff at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Since 1993 he has been in the Laser Program at LLNL, working to develop state-of-the-art lasers and components for applications in inertial confinement fusion, aerospace, medicine, materials processing and communications. Dr. Gareth Williams is a Professor of Physics at San Jose Statue University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wales in 1961 and subsequently held the post of Scientific Officer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and was a contractor to NASA with the Apollo project. Dr. Williams developed the "lasers in the classroom" program in 1998, and founded Laser LightLab Inc., a company that provides affordable optics equipment for classroom use. Dr. Richard Freeman is the Chairman Department of Applied Sciences, UC Davis. He has a 1967 BS, Physics from the University of Washington, a Ph.D,Physics from Harvard University. He specializes in lasers and their applications. This is the third presentation in this year's Science on Saturday lecture series. The series is co-hosted by LLNL's Science & Technology Education Program and Sigma Xi.