I'll discuss the following two spectral optimization problems: (1) In many optical and quantum systems it is desirable to engineer a device to spatially confine energy in a particular mode for a long period of time. I'll discuss the mathematics of energy-conserving, spatially-extended systems and present analytical and computational results on optimal energy confining structures. (2) In this part of the talk, I'll discuss the shape optimization problem where the objective function is a convex combination of sequential Laplace-Dirichlet eigenvalues. We show that as a function of the combination parameters, the optimal value is non-decreasing, Lipschitz continuous, and concave and that the minimizing set is upper hemicontinuous. For star-shaped domains with smooth boundary, we study combination parameter sets for which the ball is a local minimum. We propose a method for computing optimal domains and computationally study several properties of minimizers, including uniqueness, connectivity, symmetry, and eigenvalue multiplicity. This is joint work with Chiu-Yen Kao.