UT Austin has received $1.2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences to participate in LaserNetUS, a new national network of institutions operating high-intensity, ultrafast lasers. UT is home to one of the most powerful lasers in the country, the Texas Petawatt Laser, which generates light with at least a million billion watts of power, nearly 100 times the output of all the world’s power plants. High-intensity lasers have a broad range of applications in basic research, manufacturing and medicine. Read more.