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Award-winning City College of New York physicist Robert R. Alfano’s supercontinuum discovery has been an enabling technology for diverse novel applications including the detection of cancer using light spectroscopy and laser tissue welding. Now comes a new possibility: producing rain by the manipulation of ions.

This has caught the attention of the (UAEREP), which sent a three-member delegation, led by director , to The City College to learn more about Alfano’s research and discuss possible collaborations. 

UAEREP is an international research initiative designed to advance the science and technology of rain enhancement by offering managed grant assistance to selected teams of researchers.

“It’s very important for us to visit the college and to learn more about what they're doing, and maybe to link that with what we are doing, and to find some links and synergies so that we can build connections and build future collaborations,” said Al Mazroui. “So there’s very high potential for us to work together.”

Distinguished Professor of Science and Engineering at CCNY and one of the world’s pre-eminent researchers in photonics, Alfano initiated contact with UAEREP by sending them a proposal on his concept of forming rain from ions seeding with n₂ (nonlinear refractive index) of the supercontinuum. 

According to Alfano, UAEREP’s future collaboration with CCNY will focus on generating rain using supercontinuum properties. 

Explaining the process, Alfano said: “The fingerprint of rain with lasers would be supercontinuum. That starts it, and that means that you have ionization. With ionization occurring that means you create ions, and any water molecules that are there will attach itself to the ion -- positive or negative -- and form a minimum drop size.”

Alfano welcomed the possible collaboration with UAEREP in this age of climate change. “I think they’ve got a good program. They could make it even bigger and better, bring in more people in the United States, and also do it at the UN (United Nations).” 

The UAEREP delegation, which included Muhannad Al Badri and Sufian Farah, visited other key research centers specializing in advanced technology and water sustainability in Michigan and New York. These were Michigan Technological University (MTU) and its Great Lakes Research Center, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Thomas J. Watson Research Center at IBM, Columbia University and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Alfano’s discovery of supercontinuum light source as an enabling technology for diverse applications and tunable Cr4 and Cr3 lasers has won him numerous awards, the most recent being the (IPS) . The Photonics Society is the professional home for a global network of engineers and scientists who represent the photonics community.

Alfano holds 133 patents and has author credits on more than 730 research articles. His honors include the OSA Charles Hard Townes Award (2008); the SPIE Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award (2012); the APS Arthur L Schawlow Prize in Laser Science (2013); the OSA Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award (2016); Inventor of Year from ENYIPLA  (2018); and the SPIE Gold Medal (2019).