At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a research team has built a simulation framework that confronts one of photonics' quiet frustrations: the gap between what engineers imagine a device will do and what it actually does. By returning to Maxwell's equations — the bedrock laws governing light itself — rather than relying on inherited approximations, the team has given designers a way to see their creations whole, before a single chip is etched. Published in early 2026, this work arrives at a moment when precision science and high-speed communications both depend on frequency combs growing ev