Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.
The group was founded, as Laser Spectroscopy Group (LSG), in 1975 by Prof. Mihail Lucian Pascu, within the Institute of Physics – Bucharest (IFB) which belonged, at the time, to the Romanian Academy. It functioned between 1975 and 1977 as part of IFB, between 1977 and 1996 within the Institute of Physics and Technology of Radiation Devices (IFTAR) - Laser Department and from 1996 to-date as part of the National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics (INFLPR), within Laser Department.
In 2018 LSG took over the Laser Interferometry & Applications (ILA) Group of INFLPR which was founded in 1982 by Dr. Dan Apostol. The new group is denominated currently Laser Spectroscopy and Optics (LSO) Group and includes 17 scientists out of whom – at the moment - 14 PhD in physics, one PhD student, one assistant research scientist and one technician.
Within the group, which has strong connections with the Faculty of Physics of the University of Bucharest (FP-UB), annual master students are working for their theses, as well as PhD students in Optics and Spectroscopy head by Prof. Mihail Lucian Pascu at the Doctoral School of FP-UB or by other professors at, most often, Polytechnica University, Bucharest, University of Medicine and Pharmacy Carol Davila, Bucharest, aso.
More general, the group receives students, both undergraduate and masterands, to perform scientific research and elaborate diploma (to graduate and to obtain master degree) in the fields of: lasers, spectroscopy, optics, biophysics, pollution control using optical methods and means, laser physical biomedicine, laser pharmacology, laser-based chemistry, optofluidics. It also receives PhD students in the fields optics, laser, spectroscopy, under the coordination of the Physics Faculty, University of Bucharest (PhD head: Prof. Dr. Mihail Lucian Pascu).