University of Calgary Student Chapter 2011-2012 Annual Report
Who We Are Our student chapter situated on the University of Calgary campus consists of 10 members. This past year, 2011-2012 was the third year for our SPIE student chapter. We are a joint student chapter with the Optical Society of America chapter which was founded in 2006. A majority of our members are graduate students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary. More specifically, we are members of the Institute of Quantum Information Science and experimentalists working in one of two state-of-the-art quantum optics labs at the UofC. Chapter Officers John Travis Brannan President jtbranna@ucalgary.ca Ryan Thomas Vice President rjthomas@ucalgary.ca Chris Healey Treasurer cjhealey@ucalgary.ca Andrew MacRae Secretary ajmacrae@ucalgary.ca Dr. Alexander Lvovsky Chapter Advisor lvov@ucalgary.ca
Current Student Chapter Members Name Expires Erick Barrios Barocio 24 January 2013 John Travis Brannan 31 January 2013 Christopher Healey 25 March 2012 Ranjeet Kumar 9 February 2013 Connor Kupchak 26 March 2012 Ben Lavoie 27 May 2012 Andrew MacRae 22 February 2013 Pantita Palittpongarnpim 11 November 2012 Conrad Rizal 28 May 2012 Ryan Thomas 24 January 2013
Activities in 2011-2012 1. Educational Outreach Lab Tour We hosted a group of third year undergraduate students for a lab tour on March 22, 2011. We explained what we did in our quantum optics lab and hopefully got them interested in some of the research that is going on the field of optics and photonics.
2. Educational Activities QuNO 2011 The University of Calgary joint OSA/SPIE Student Chapter hosted the third annual Alberta Quantum and Nano-Optics (QuNO 11) Student Meeting at the University of Calgary campus on June 24th. The goal was to give graduate students from all over Western Canada an opportunity to communicate theoretical and experimental technical tools that they have acquired to other graduate students, as well as present the opportunity to discuss recent results. To achieve this goal we organized a series of 20-minute student presentations, allowing students to present their work and practice their scientific communication skills. The event was completely put on by members of our student chapter, and we thank last year s organizing committee of Ryan Thomas, Chris Healey, Connor Kupchak, and Ranjeet Kumar. The event featured 13 20-minute talks from local graduate students which allowed for communication of recent results and technical innovations to each other. These talks were divided into three sessions with two coffee breaks and a lunch break in between. QuNO 2011 also featured Dr. Paul Barclay from the University of Calgary as our keynote speaker. The day concluded with a free barbeque meal that we hosted at Edworthy Park. The Keynote presentation by Dr. Barclay focused on his research with nitrogen vacancy centers in diamonds. Dr. Barclay got his PhD at Caltech where he worked with Dr. Painter in creating nanophotonic devices for experiments in nonlinear optics. He spent some time working at the Hewlett-Packard s Information and Quantum Systems lab before coming to the University of Calgary as a professor. Dr. Barclay has made several significant contributions to the field of nanophotonics, by designing, fabricating, and measuring new types of nanoscale optical devices from a wide range of materials. His work is motivated by creating devices which shed light on new areas of physics, in particular the area of quantum information science. Important contributions include the first measurement of nonlinear effects in silicon nanocavities, development of widely adopted fiber probing methods for subwavelength photonic devices, and demonstration of some of the first diamond based nanophotonic devices for quantum optics experiments. His talk provided an interesting look into some of the exciting new research areas going on in photonics today.
This event was sponsored by SPIE, OSA, the University of Calgary, and the Institute for Quantum Information Science. All in all, it was a fun event to put on and a great way to get more involved in the optics and photonics community.
Optics and Photonics 2011 San Diego Our chapter participated in the annual meeting of Optics and Photonics in San Diego from August 21 August 25, 2011. The meeting was attended by Ryan Thomas, who was last year s treasurer and the current vice president of our student chapter. Ryan gave a presentation on his research, and attended many of the activities at the conference. While he was there, Ryan represented our chapter in the leadership meeting. They discussed the important topic of how to motivate chapter members to be more active, which is an issue that many chapters face, including our own. He then passed the tools that he had learned on to other chapter members in the next chapter meeting afterwards, and hopefully we will be able to use them to continue improving our chapter. Ryan also the networking event and went to a lunch with two professors from other Universities. Networking with colleagues in the same field is very useful and helps to facilitate communication between research groups.
3. Recruitment Activities Pizza Information Session Our chapter held a recruitment and information session on April 4, 2011. Like we did last time, we booked a classroom from 12-1:30pm and provided free pizza and pop, with all chapter members in attendance to promote and inform all attendees about our OSA/SPIE chapter. The aim was to recruit more undergraduates and graduate students from other research groups into our student chapter. To advertise we went into 3rd and 4th year undergraduate classrooms to promote the event. We also distributed flyers postings in and around the science buildings and advertised directly in the physics undergraduate student association offices. We also sent out emails to other graduate students. This time we attracted about 15 attendees outside of our chapter. However, we still had difficulty in getting attendees to sign up for membership. We are considering ways that we can change this and recruit more members next time.
Upcoming Activities 1. Outreach Activities We currently do not have any educational outreach activities planned in the near future. We will discuss new ideas in our next chapter meeting. 2. Educational Activities Conferences Currently there are no plans to host a conference this year, however we have contacted the University of Alberta and they are planning on hosting a photonics conference. We are planning to discuss ways that we can contribute to this in our next chapter meeting. Guest Speaker We hope to use one of our OSA or SPIE travelling lecturer grants to invite a speaker to Calgary this coming summer. 3. Recruitment Activities Spring Recruitment Party We are holding a second recruitment session with free pizza and pop at the end of March 2012. This time around we will once again enter upper year undergraduate offices and email and post notices to advertise the event. We are also trying to think of ways to encourage attendees to join rather than just showing up for the food.
2011-2012 Financial Report All values are in CND dollars Date Income Expenses Bank Balance Notes Starting Balance Nov 2010 $ 2,248.71 * Pizza Recruitment Party Apr 2011 $ 141.34 $ 2,107.37 QuNO 2011 Expenses Jul 2011 $ 650.00 $ 1,457.37 Ending Balance Mar 2012 $ 1,457.37 Balance as of March 1, 2012 $ 1,457.37 Total Expenses 2011-2012 $ 791.34 Total Revenue 2011-2012 $ - *Starting balance consists of funds of $1548.71 carried over from last year plus a $700 from SPIE that was meant for CQISC 10. Overall expense for the CQISC conference was less than projected, so we did not use the money then and held on to it for funding of QuNO 2011.