Karlsruhe School of Optics & Photonics (KSOP)

The Karlsruhe School of Optics & Photonics (KSOP) was founded as the first Graduate School of the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) in 2006. KSOP provides a multidisciplinary environment for first-class research and education as well as for the generation of knowledge and innovation in Optics & Photonics.

Since its foundation, the Karlsruhe School of Optics & Photonics has been funded under the German excellence initiative that was launched to support world-class research and education at German universities. The excellence status of KSOP was renewed for another five years after a successful evaluation by international experts in 2012. KSOP offers a Master and a PhD program in English. By now, almost 600 Master and PhD students and alumni from 40 different countries are part of KSOP.

The research areas of KSOP are Photonic Materials and Devices, Advanced Spectroscopy, Biomedical Photonics, Optical Systems and Solar Energy. Among others, the area of Optical Systems includes the fields of machine vision and optical sensing for automotive applications which are highly relevant for the development of advanced driver assistance systems and automated vehicles. Examples are robust lidar and video sensing techniques for environment perception under bad visibility conditions, new sensor systems and enhanced data analysis techniques.