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04 May 2008
Top Students Receive Travel Grants for CLEO
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Lyndsay Meyer
The Optical Society
+1.202.416.1435
lmeyer@osa.org
Top Students Receive Travel Grants for CLEO
WASHINGTON, May 4 – Funded through an endowment to the Optical Society of America Foundation by Milton and Rosalind Chang, the Incubic/Milton Chang Travel Grant has been awarded to 10 graduate students who will present papers during the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) this week in San Jose, Calif. The 10 students coming to CLEO from six different countries were chosen from among 80 highly-qualified applicants. The grant is awarded annually to 20 top students overall, who present papers during CLEO or the Optical Society Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO).
The following students were awarded grants to present their work at CLEO:
- J. Thomas Blakely, University of Victoria, Canada
- Nicole Brimhall, Brigham Young University, USA
- Daniel Corrêa, São Paulo University, Brazil
- Marcello Ferrera, INRS-EMT, Canada
- Ivan Garanovich, Australian National University, Australia
- Qing Gu, University of British Columbia, Canada
- Alireza Hassani, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
- J. Bianca Jackson, University of Michigan, USA
- Jiahui Peng, Texas A&M University, USA
- Keith Serrels, Heriot Watt University, United Kingdom
“OSA is proud to provide the next generation of scientists and engineers with the important opportunity to present their research at the leading technical conference in lasers and electro-optics,” said OSA Executive Director Elizabeth Rogan. “These students have shown a strong dedication to their fields of study and serve as role models for their peers.”
Students who have benefited from the travel grants are enthusiastic about the value of the program. Meredith M. Lee, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering and president of the Stanford OSA Chapter, received a grant in 2007. She said, "Receiving the OSA student travel award allowed me to fly across the country to attend a very exciting CLEO meeting. At last year's conference I stayed the whole duration, not only participating in technical sessions, but also enrolling in short courses and networking with the other grant recipients and many student OSA representatives. It was great to have the support from the Incubic/Milton Chang award so I could make the most of the trip."
Applications for the grant are reviewed by the Awards Subcommittee of OSA’s Membership and Education Services Council. Students are judged on their paper submission, financial need and letters of recommendation. The winners each receive a grant of $1,000 to cover travel-related expenses to attend and present at CLEO or FiO. The application deadline for the Incubic/Milton Chang Travel Grant for the 2008 FiO meeting is July 15. For more information on these grants and how to apply, visit http://www.osa.org/awards_and_grants/grants/default.aspx.
About the OSA Foundation
The OSA Foundation was established in 2002 to support philanthropic activities that help further the Optical Society’s mission by concentrating its efforts on programs that advance youth science education, provide optics education and resources to underserved populations, provide career and professional development resources and support OSA's Awards and Honors program. The grants funded by the OSA Foundation are made possible by the generous donations of its supporters as well as the dollar-for-dollar match by OSA.The Foundation is exempt from US federal income taxes under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is a public charity. To learn more about the OSA Foundation or to find out how to donate, please visit www.osa-foundation.org or email foundation@osa.org.
About CLEO/QELS
With a distinguished history as one of the industry’s leading events on laser science, the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference (CLEO/QELS) is where laser technology was first introduced. CLEO/QELS combines the strength of peer-reviewed scientific programming with an applications-focused exhibition to showcase the present and future of this technology. Sponsored by the American Physical Society’s (APS) Laser Science Division, the Institute of Electronic Engineers/Laser and Electro-Optics Society (IEEE/LEOS) and the Optical Society (OSA), CLEO/QELS provides an educational forum, complete with a dynamic Plenary, short courses, tutorials, workshops and more, on topics as diverse as its attendee base whose broad spectrum of interests range from biomedicine to defense to optical communications and beyond. For more information, visit the conference’s Web site at www.cleoconference.org.