Current research in optics includes using laser and spectroscopic techniques from the UV to the far IR to probe the linear and nonlinear dynamics of the low lying excitations in homogeneous and heterogeneous media. The electrodynamics of glasses, glassy crystals, nanoscale defects, and interstellar dust grains are currently under investigation. The dynamical properties of intrinsic localized vibrational modes in anharmonic crystals, of coupled MEMS oscillator arrays and of intrinsic localized spin wave modes in magnetic solids are also being studied. These new kinds of energy localizing excitations are made possible by a combination of lattice nonlinearity and lattice discreteness. The development of a chip-scale static 2-D holographic fourier transform spectroscopic system that can operate over the infrared, visible and UV spectral regions provides unusual breadth to the experimental program.