Abstract: For over a thousand years, the field of optics has benefited from advances in materials and manufacturing technology. Recent advances in micro- and nanotechnology have led to a number of breakthroughs enabled by modern semiconductor processing techniques and advances in optical materials. This talk will explore a number of specific advances in optical technologies at Sandia National Laboratories enabled by the MESA facility. MESA is the U.S. government’s largest semiconductor manufacturing and research and development facility. It includes fabs for both silicon and III–V compound semiconductors in a 100K ft2 cleanroom. In addition to the fabs, MESA has over 100 light labs that both support and extract value from the fabs, and design, packaging, test and failure analysis capabilities to help migrate advances from basic research to production. This talk will explore a number of specific advances in optical technologies enabled by MESA (and by University of Arizona graduates and former faculty). Topics will include silicon and compound semiconductor photonics, photonic crystals, infrared metamaterials, plasmonics, nano-optomechanics, optical sensors, vertical cavity lasers, and micro-electromechanical systems.