Photonics research and student life at the University of Toronto

On Thursday 11th August I visited the University of Toronto. Their SPIE student chapter hosted me for the day, and I had the chance to visit Professor Peter Herman’s research labs, and exchange ideas with researchers and students whom I met. This article is going to look quite academic, with a number of references to conference papers that I have published; they are numbered in square brackets – like this: [1], [2], etc. – and I promised I’d send them through.

I came to Toronto prepared with a well-rehearsed research talk based on a presentation I gave last month in Vancouver, BC [1]. The researchers in Toronto employ very similar fabrication techniques to the ones I have been working on in Southampton, so I figured that there would be some learned opinions and tough questions. They didn’t disappoint. I had to do some convincing that the integrated photonics devices that I presented last year at a conference in Munich worked the way we expected them to [2]. I was thrilled that my talk turned into a discussion, with regular interruptions to find out more on various topics. It’s given me ideas to research, reflect on and explore when I return from my travels.

I had the opportunity to present my work on integrated photonics devices to researchers from the University of Toronto.

I met with Kevin, Zeinab and Ahmed, all graduate students and officers of the University of Toronto’s SPIE student chapter. We shared our experiences of running our respective societies. I was inspired by the professional development activities that they organised and took part in, events like international student conferences, and talks from world-leading academics, to name a few. After that, I presented to them the outreach kit that I am touring, and told them more about our Lightwave Roadshow that I have been leading/overseeing for the past 3 years in Southampton [3].

Lunch with Kevin, Zeinab and Ahmed (starting at the back right, and going clockwise!) from the University of Toronto SPIE student chapter.

Thank you for the coffee, lunch, lab visits and the tour of the campus, it was an excellent day!

References

[1] M. Posner, P. L. Mennea, N. Podoliak, P. Horak, J. C. Gates, and P. G. Smith, “Integrated polarizing coupler based on tilted gratings,” in Advanced Photonics 2016 (IPR, NOMA, Sensors, Networks, SPPCom, SOF), OSA technical Digest (online) (Optical Society of America, 2016), paper IW3B.3; video and talk online (OSA members only)

[2] M. T. Posner, P. L. Mennea, N. Podoliak, P. Horak, J. C. Gates, and P. G. Smith, “45° tilted gratings for silica-based integrated polarizers,” in 2015 European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics – European Quantum Electronics Conference, (Optical Society of America, 2015), paper CE_10_5

[3] N. H. L. Wong, M. T. Posner, P. V. John, “The Lightwave programme and roadshow: an overview and update,”, Proc. SPIE 9793, Education and Training in Optics and Photonics: ETOP 2015, 97932V (8 October 2015); doi:10.1117/12.2223239

Boulder wrap-up

Boulder has been great. I hope you saw the pictures and my post about my visit to NIST.

Last Thursday I had a mini industry day. I started the day with coffee with David Giltner, product manager at Zolo technologies, and who I, and the University of Southampton Optics and Photonics Society, have invited to Southampton to give a talk to try and answer the question “Can a scientist find a rewarding career in industry?” That’ll be on September 13th, stay tuned!

I followed up with a visit to Vescent Photonics in Golden. They, amongst other things, help take scientific ideas and make them into products. They are doing some really exciting work on packaging lasers, and I talked about some of the work that fellow PhD student Stephen Lynch is working on.

On Friday I visited the University of Colorado Boulder. Their OSA-SPIE chapter showed me around their labs. They are working on some really cool stuff, including portable LIDAR systems for remote sensing in water (see Rory holding his portable system below), optical filters (think light) that you can tune with acoustic waves (think sound) for spectroscopy imaging, and silicon photonics for light-based computing. It was great to meet the chapter, who organised for me to present my research. I also caught up on Monday to present the outreach kit I am touring.

Rory Barton-Grimley with his single photon LIDAR.

Scientists and engineers love acronyms. Who can guess what ARSNL and SQUIDS stand for?

Here they are:

ARSNL: Active remote sensing lab
SQUIDS: Superconducting quantum interference devices

It’s not all people though. What’s kept me from writing here has been writing up two papers that I will be presenting at the SPIE Optics Education and Outreach conference that I’m attending in San Diego at the end of the month. Last week was spent writing in every possible break and 12+ hours day at the weekend. Thankfully I have a brilliant group of co-authors to review my words, and it was all submitted by Monday.

I felt like I deserved a break on my last day in town and headed out for a bike ride. It was a glorious day, pushing my body and bike up over the top of mountains. Super happy to have ridden to above the 3,000 metre mark. The descent was totally worth it though, as was the beer and pizza after!

Brainard lake, on a bike. My first ride ever over 3,000 metres!

Next up is Toronto. Hope you can tune in. You can now subscribe to updates to not miss any of my posts or gallery updates.

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Meeting the COPSS

I made it to Calgary. It was a fantastic road trip. The last few days of it were spent between mountains, lakes and my laptop, enjoying the views and preparing a presentation for a seminar at the University of Calgary for its Optics and Photonics Society (COPSS) . COPSS are excellent hosts, and all pictures herein at courtesy of Linhui Yu.

My talk was on my research and life as a PhD student in the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre. The audience was really engaging, and had lots of questions for me. We talked about my experience as a student in Southampton, and I presented some of the work that I’ve done as President of Southampton’s Optics and Photonics Society.

Presenting my work on integrated polarising couplers.

I run a small workshop using the outreach kit that I am travelling with. Part of the kit features samples to explain the research that we do in Southampton, that are made with the fabrication tools that are available in Southampton. In this picture I am talking about a hollow-core fibre preform that was 3D printed by Lieke van Putten as part of her PhD research.

Demonstrating examples of kit that I use to teach about optoelectronics science and research. I'm holding a 3D printed hollow-core fibre preform made by Lieke Van Putten. — Demonstrating examples of kit that I use to teach about optoelectronics science and research. I’m holding a 3D printed hollow-core fibre preform made by Lieke Van Putten.

I had the chance to visit research labs. There’s some really cool work going on in the Electrical Engineering department for developing new systems for the optical imaging of the brain.

I also visited 3 labs in the physics departments, where they were doing some mind-blowing quantum physics experiments, including, but not limited to, magneto-optical trapping (Alexander Lvosky, and team), quantum repeaters for long-haul telecommunications systems (Wolfgang Tittel, and team), and nanoscale optomechanics (Paul Barclay, and team).

A big thanks to Chris Healey for facilitating my visit through the physics department.

Finally, a bit of science. I really like this picture. It was taken through diffraction glasses. These are sheets of plastic with 1000s of parallel lines that split all of the colours of light by diffraction. I’ve handed out hundreds of these glasses in science fairs, exhibitions, garden shows, etc. and people love them! They are really useful to grab people’s attention and serve as a great ice-breaker at the start of any conversation.

Life is colourful if you look at it through diffraction glasses!

Conference Outreach

Don’t ask don’t get

I have in my possession a portable outreach education kit named TS Squared: Teaching Students to Teach Students.

It fits in a back pack, weighs less than 2.5 kg and is going to go on tour with me around universities in Canada and the USA.

In this box you will find hands-on experiments and visually exciting demonstrations on the subjects of photonics and electronics: mirrors, colours, EM spectrum and telecommunications. These are accessible to students who are not specialist in the subject area, and will enable them to understand and teach the fundamentals to younger students or peers.

The box also contains samples of the research that is carried out at the Optoelectronics Research Centre in Southampton. This is where I get to talk about my work on Integrated Photonics and my upcoming presentation, and grow the number of potential attendees!

We have sample give-aways (more on this in a bit) to give people ideas and explain how we can use different gifts to measure the quality of our engagement. Business cards are for business, diffraction gratings for a meaningful scientific interaction, and quantum key rings for something really special!

Back to the original quote then. I asked the conference organisers if we could display this kit, and they gratefully accepted my request and put me up in the conference exhibition hall.

The Ligthwave Roadshow on world tour, here in Vancouver, Canada.

It has been an enriching experience. I’ve enjoyed working with fellow-PHD student Miranda Turvey on the exhibit, and telling 8 research students, 3 conference organisers, 2 friends visiting Vancouver, 6 world-leading researchers and 3 members from industry about the outreach & public engagement of my research that I do, imparting some new scientific or practical knowledge on how I do my outreach. The table has also brought together 12 researchers from the Optoelectronics Research Centre and Gregory Quarles, the OSA’s chief scientist.

Researchers from the ORC at IPR Vancouver 2016

There’s a sour note to all this though. Today, 5 of our display items went missing*. People may have assumed that anything left out was fair game to take. Absolutely gutted that I’m missing these, but the show will go on.

Because it does. Today, I’ve had coffee to discuss potential outreach projects with Cloud State University, Minnesotta, discussing with universities in the USA and Canada to present the kit to the chapters, and learning exciting new stuff at this incredible conference.

* Update 21/07: the items have been retrieved and the show will go on!