Research done at the University of Rochester laser lab has earned a share of the Nobel Prize for physics.
While at the U of R in the 1980's, French researcher Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland, now at the University of Waterloo in Canada, invented chirped pulse amplification. It's a technique to boost the power of laser pulses.
They are sharing this year's prize with a Bell Labs researcher who invented "optical tweezers" -- using focused laser beams to hold microscopic objects.