We developed a two-stage Ti:sapphire laser system to generate 16 mJ/80 fs laser pulses at a pulse repetition rate of 10 Hz. The key deriver for the present design is implementing a highly efficient symmetric confocal pre-amplifier and employing a simple, inexpensive synchronization scheme relying only on a commercial digital delay generator. We characterized the amplified pulses in spatial, spectral and temporal domains. The laser system was used to investigate various nonlinear optical processes, and to modify the optical properties of metal and semiconductor surfaces. We are currently building a third amplifier to boost the laser power to the multi-terawatt range.