University of North Carolina at Charlotte SPIE Graduate Student Chapter Bi-Annual Report: May 2007 2007-2008 Officers President: Amit Suratkar arsuratk@uncc.edu Vice-President: Yi-Chen Chuang ychuang1@uncc.edu Secretary: Kavan Acharya kacharya@uncc.edu Treasurer: Kristin Walker knwalker@uncc.edu Advisor: Dr. Tsing-Hua Her ther@uncc.edu Webpage: http://www.sco.uncc.edu/spie/ Current Members 1. Kavan Acharya 2. Shashanka Ashili 3. Brent Bergner 4. Kaia Buhl 5. Aaron Cannistra 6. Harsh Chaturvedi 7. Yi-Chen Chuang 8. Serenity Dunn 9. Choon How Gan 10. Yalong Gu 11. Javaid Ikram 12. Ja-Yeon Jeong 13. Jason Jerald 14. Guoliang Jiang 15. Je Hong Kim 16. Ying Li 17. Mona Mayeh 18. Wesley Parker 19. Kinnari Patel 20. Amit Suratkar 21. Mingzhen Tang 22. Keisha Thomas 23. Kristin Walker
Chapter Activities since last report July-August: Redesigning the Chapter Website Kavan (secretary) and I redesigned the Chapter website with a general focus to attract public from all domains with little or no knowledge of optics to the expert. For the curious mind, we also planned to incorporate educational institutions and clusters involved in optics around the globe by using two already designed engines from SPIE and OSA. A third element was to project the existing facilities at our University (Center for Optoelectronics and Optical Communications, Center for Precision Metrology and Carolinas MicroOptics Triangle) to the outside world. A lot of resources concerning optics and physics have been carefully categorized and include career development tools, professional and technical organization in optics, technical libraries, industry alliances etc. RSS feeds (in the tab ) provide latest optics news in the industry and universities and is the pick of our website along with the resources web page. August 26-30, 2007: SPIE Optics and Photonics Conference Four students including myself, Kristin Walker, Brent Bergner and Harsh Chaturvedi attended the conference and three of us attended the Student Leadership workshop on August 25 th and 26 th. Harsh Chaturvedi used the officers travel grant to attend the conference along with Kristin Walker, while Brent and I used another source of funding. Being elected President of the Chapter, the conference was very useful in terms of knowing other chapter leaders and their activities, active networking with experts during lunch, participating in leadership related issues through group discussions, career development tools apart from attending talks in our research related areas and trade shows. At the awards functions our chapter received an honorary prize for our website (Student Resources webpage) Harsh Chaturvedi also received a research scholarship for his work on carbon nanotubes.
September 6: Meeting with the Society of Physics Students (SPS) at UNC Charlotte Kristin (past president) and I attended a meeting of SPS students with the main objective of getting to know the SPS Chapter better and for them to know SPIE better. We discussed SPIE activities as well as SPIE Student Chapter activities and provided handouts for scholarships and grants available through SPIE. A survey was conducted in which the students were asked to answer simple questions about using light in their experiment to knowing more about scholarships and having an event co-hosted with SPIE. Twelve graduate physics students were present and six of them were interested in getting to know SPIE better in terms of scholarships and grants. We are in the process of getting such students interested to be SPIE members. September 19: General Meeting with all students (16) In our first general meeting with all the optics students (SPIE members and non-members), the main objective was to encourage student involvement in all SPIE activities. In keeping with policies of the Student Government Association at our University, changes to the By-laws and the Constitution were proposed. Voting was to be done by email with a Yes or No to the proposed amendments. A two third majority was obtained and the updated Constitution and Bylaws were submitted to SPIE for their records. The presentation was divided into two sections, one to talk about SPIE and the Student Chapter (myself) and the other was to highlight the experiences we had from the recently concluded SPIE leadership workshop in San Deigo (Kristin- treasurer and past president). September October: Optics Seminar Speaker Series Attending non technical talks to aid career and professional development has been part of the Optics Seminar series at UNC Charlotte. Three such talks were selected to increase the awareness of students to topics such as intellectual property, ethics and project management. All SPIE student members and non-members were invited for all of the three talks below Date Talk Student Count 1 Sep 19 Intellectual Property: Director of Office of 10 Technological Transfer 2 Oct 10 Ethics Discussion: Dr Corwin (hosted by Dr Angela 12 Davies) 3 Oct 31 Project Management: Dr Gary Teng (Director Engineering Management Program) 11
October 19: Lunch with Speaker: Dr Grover Swartzlander (University of Arizona s Optical Sciences Center) During each semester, the optics center invites a speaker for a Friday seminar. It has been our tradition to invite one such speaker to a luncheon organized by SPIE. This semester we invited Dr. Grover Swartzlander from the University of Arizona s Optical Sciences Center for lunch with SPIE student members and non members. Topics of discussion included problems encountered in writing journal papers, attending conferences, presentations and the general research culture with his students at Arizona. Twenty SPIE students attended the luncheon. His research talk following the luncheon on Optical Vortices and the Hunt for Habitable Planets, was well received. October 31: SPIE funded snacks with Ron Scotti Dr. Ron Scotti (SPIE s technical programs, Science and Technology Strategist) who attended the annual Optics Symposium at our University held (from Oct 31 st until Nov 1 st ) had an informal discussion with students about the nature of the optics industry, student careers, his background and SPIE. Twenty students attended this snack session sponsored by SPIE.
November 2: Nobel Laureate visits UNC Charlotte: Outreach Activity for high school kids The SPIE student chapter along with the regional OSA Chapter and the Center for Optoelectronics and Optical Communications planned a small outreach activity for high school kids attending the public talk by Nobel Laureate Dr Bill Phillips on "Time, Einstein and the coolest stuff in the universe" (sponsored by the Charlotte Research Institute : part of UNC Charlotte). The basic objective was to get high school kids interested in optics and its applications. The outreach activity and the public talk were hosted in the Student Activity Center salons at UNC Charlotte. Some of the projects included demonstrating optical effects by experiments, optical illusions, information from SPIE posters and two videos. A brief list is as follows: 1) Diffraction using Tessera Incorporation s diffractive micro-optic 2) Hologram display: Bausch and Lomb Hologram 3) Moiré Patterns of Center Director Mike Fiddy and Albert Einstein 4) Martian Landscape obtained from SPIE bookstore 5) The Crookes Radiometer 6) Voice over Fiber: Fiber optics Voice and Data kit obtained from physlink store 7) Sound into light conversion using LightCast: Kit obtained from physlink store 8) Light at Work CD from SPIE 9) Jason Lattimer s Laser Magic show obtained from the website 10) Optical Illusions 11) SPIE posters Voice over Fiber demonstration A fiber optics voice over data kit was bought and assembled in house by us to demonstrate voice over fiber over one meter.
Sound into Light conversion using Lightcast in the background The unit was connected to a computer and the speaker and songs were played to display the different frequencies (pitches) in the form of various lights (somewhat similar to disco lighting). Songs from the 70s showed a better distribution of lights then the recent ones. Diffractive Optics from Tessera Incorporation s diffractive micro optic card Diffraction was explained to students and they were allowed to use lasers to shine light on the diffractive micro-optic card and see different patterns.
Fun with Moiré Patterns: Center Director: Dr Mike Fiddy Albert Einstein Our setup:
Nobel laureate Bill Phillips speaks on "Time, Einstein and the coolest stuff in the universe"
Nobel Laureate Bill Phillips with the SPIE Student Chapter Group at UNC Charlotte A total of 334 people (about 250 high school kids) attended the event which was the largest in terms of the registration and thank you notes for any event sponsored by the Charlotte Research Institute (CRI) according to Karen Ford who works with the institute. Most of the high school kids were found to be actively engaged with the SPIE students about the nature of experiments and optics in general. Jason Lattimer s laser magic show was a hit with the kids, followed by the Moiré and diffraction patterns and the hologram. There was interest in buying the Martian poster from a lecturer. Most of the teachers have requested to have such events in the near future.
Upcoming Activities: Spring 08 Conference: January, 2008 Photonics West We currently have three students planning to attend this conference. Lunch with the Speaker Based on previous success, we plan to continue this event ever semester. This time we are planning to use the SPIE funds to invite a guest speaker. Industry visit We are in the process of planning a visit to a local optics industry. The objective is to get to know the local optics industries in the vicinity and the nature of their business. Career Panel Discussion Based on a good feedback received from a previous career panel discussion, we have decided to try another optics related career panel discussion where we plan to invite university career development staff along with industry leaders for a small get together with students. Financial Statement SPIE Funds 5/1/2007 Current Balance 857.39 6/15/2007 Kavan Acharya Travel -500.00 9/19/2007 SPIE Meeting Pizza -35.00 11/26/2007 2007 Activity Grant 900.00 ---------- Total Funds Remaining 1222.39 UNCC GPSG Funds (Graduate and Professional Student Government)* 9/1/2007 Beginning Balance 2961.00 10/19/2007 Lunch with Speaker -140.64 ----------- Current Balance 2820.36 1/2008 Photonics West Aaron -500.00 1/2008 Photonics West Mingzhen -500.00 1/2008 Photonics West Kristin -500.00 ---------- Anticipated Balance 1320.36 * funds allocated by the UNC Charlotte Graduate and Professional Student Government and provided by the Student Activity Fees