Events
2020 Siegman International School on Lasers
20 July 2020 – 24 July 2020 OSA Virtual Event - (UTC - 00:00)
The OSA Foundation will host an All-Stars Virtual Siegman School chaired by Eric Mazur, Harvard University on 20-24 July 2020. All past Siegman School students are invited to attend as well as those accepted to the 2020* school. This will include speakers from previous years, networking with peers, and the opportunity to continue the the Siegman School tradition.
The Siegman International School is a week-long program that exposes students to in-depth learning of lasers and their applications from internationally recognized academic and industry leaders in the field. The school was established in honor of Anthony E. Siegman, 1999 OSA President, founding board member of The OSA Foundation and widely known expert on lasers and optics. This program is co-founded by IPG Photonics and endowed by donors from around the world. The scope includes all aspects of lasers and photonics.
This program was originally scheduled for 18-25 July 2020 with the host institution - the University of Warsaw. With the current travel restrictions and other impacts from COVID-19, the 2020 Siegman School will not be able to proceed as planned. The University of Warsaw will host the in-person school in 2021.
The OSA Foundation believes we have a unique opportunity to retool this school and leverage current technology and best-practices for online learning and engagement and also want to continue our tradition of hosting a Siegman School annually.
*2020 students will automatically be invited to the 2021 school in Warsaw.
Speakers
Moderator
Eric Mazur
Harvard University, USA
Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Chair of Applied Physics at Harvard University, Member of the Faculty of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Past President of the Optical Society. Mazur is a prominent physicist known for his contributions in nanophotonics, an internationally recognized educational innovator, and a sought after speaker. In education he is widely known for his work on Peer Instruction, an interactive teaching method aimed at engaging students in the classroom and beyond. In 2014 Mazur became the inaugural recipient of the Minerva Prize for Advancements in Higher Education. He has received many awards for his work in physics and in education and has founded several successful companies. Mazur has widely published in peer-reviewed journals and holds numerous patents. He has also written extensively on education and is the author of Peer Instruction: A User's Manual (Prentice Hall, 1997), a book that explains how to teach large lecture classes interactively, and of the Principles and Practice of Physics (Pearson, 2015), a book that presents a groundbreaking new approach to teaching introductory calculus-based physics. Mazur is a leading speaker on optics and on education. His motivational lectures on interactive teaching, educational technology, and assessment have inspired people around the world to change their approach to teaching.
Speakers
Andrew Forbes
University of Witwatersrand, South Africa
The Creation and Control of Structured Light
This talk will cover the basics of "structured light", from creation at the source to classical and quantum applications.
About the Speaker
Andrew received his PhD (1998) from the University of Natal (South Africa), and subsequently spent several years as an applied laser physicist, first in a technology start-up where he was Technical Director, and later as Chief Researcher and Research Group Leader of the Mathematical Optics group at the CSIR. Andrew is presently a Distinguished Professor within the School of Physics at the U. Witwatersrand (South Africa) where he has established a new laboratory for Structured Light. Andrew is active in promoting photonics in Africa, a founding member of the Photonics Initiative of South Africa and initiator of South Africa’s Quantum Roadmap. He is a Fellow of both SPIE and the OSA, an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and holds an A-rating by the South African NRF. He holds 3 honorary professor positions, is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Optics and associated editor for Optics Express, and in 2015 won a national award for his contributions to photonics in South Africa. In 2020 he was awarded the Georg Forster prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for outstanding contributions to photonics. Andrew spends his time having fun with the taxpayers’ money, exploring structured light in lasers as well as classical and quantum optics.
Clara Saraceno
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
Ultrafast Lasers: Smaller, Faster, Stronger
We will cover basics of ultrashort pulse generation, the state-of-the-art of ultrafast laser technology, and future and present applications enabled by progress in their performance.
About the Speaker
Clara Saraceno was born in Argentina in 1983 and studied at the Institut d’Optique in Palaiseau, France. After completing her studies she first went into industry from 2007 to 2008, working for a laser manufacturer (Coherent Inc.) in the USA. She then continued her academic training in Switzerland, completing a doctorate in Physics at ETH Zurich in 2012 which brought her, amongst others, the 2013 QEOD Thesis Prize, awarded by the Electronics and Optics Division of the European Physical Society. After graduation, Saraceno has worked at ETH Zurich and the University of Neuchatel as a postdoctoral researcher. Most recently, her research work on high-power ultrafast lasers earned her the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2015). In 2016, she was appointed as Professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology in the Ruhr University Bochum, where she currently works on ultrafast laser physics and terahertz technology.
Eric Van Stryland
CREOL, USA
Nonlinear Materials Spectroscopy and Causality
I will mention the history of nonlinear optics, NLO, and give a few examples of its uses. I will describe what I do, i.e., characterize and model NLO materials. I will discuss, Z-scan and Beam Deflection for measuring NLO absorption and refraction and discuss how these two quanties are related by “Causality”, i.e. Kramers-Kronig relations.
About the Speaker
Eric Van Stryland received a PhD in Physics in 1976, from the Univ. of Arizona, Optical Sciences Center, where he worked on optical coherent transients and photon counting statistics. He worked in femtosecond pulse production, multiphoton absorption, and laser induced damage at the Center for Laser Studies, Univ. of Southern California. He joined the physics department at the Univ. of North Texas in l978 helping to form the Center for Applied Quantum Electronics. In l987 he joined the newly formed CREOL (Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers) at the Univ. of Central Florida. NSF and DoD have funded him for the past 30 years. His current research interests are in the characterization of the nonlinear optical properties of materials and their temporal response as well as the applications of these nonlinear materials properties for optical switching, beam control etc. He developed the Z-scan technique and established the methodology for applying Kramers-Kronig relations to ultrafast nonlinearities and developed the field of cascaded second-order effects. The JQE publication on Z-scan has been noted as the most highly cited paper in the journal’s 30 year history by a factor of 2. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA), IEEE, SPIE and APS, a past member of the OSA and LIA Boards of Directors, former co-chair of the OSA Science and Engineering Council. He also served as a topical editor for Optics Letters. He was elected President of the OSA for 2006. He graduated 31 Ph.D.’s and published ~300 papers and is on the ISI ‘highly cited’ list. In 2003 he was awarded the highest honor UCF bestows, the Pegasus Award (earlier he was co-recipient of UNT’s highest award). He was Director of the School of Optics/CREOL from 1999 to 2004. With the elevation of the School to a College, he became its first Dean. In addition, Governor Jeb Bush established the Florida Photonics Center of Excellence (FPCE) in 2003 and he was the Director of that Center along with CREOL, both centers within the College. In a second round of centers of excellence, the College established the Townes Laser Institute named after the inventor of the maser and laser, Charles Hard Townes. In January, 2009 he retired as Dean but continues as a faculty member in the College, and he received UCF’s Researcher of the Year Award. He became a Trustee Chair in 2012, and was awarded the R.W. Wood Prize of the OSA in 2012.
Hanieh Fattahi
Max Planck Institute, Germany
Laser Spectroscopy at Extreme Limits: From Femtosecond to Attosecond
I will cover the basics of femtosecond field-resolved spectroscopy and attosecond spectroscopy. In break out room their applications, state of the art and their enabling technology are discussed
About the Speaker
Hanieh Fattahi studied Applied physics at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and received her PhD in Physics at Ludwig Maximilians university of Munich. Since then, she has been a researcher at the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics. She is the recipient of the Minerva scholarship of Max Planck Society in 2016 and was elected as a member of “Schiemann Kolleg” in 2017. Her research centers on i) ynthesis of intense controlled waveforms of laser light, ii) design and development of thin-disk lasers and optical parametric amplifiers, and iii) femtosecond molecular fieldoscopy. She is the fellow of Max Planck center for Extreme and Quantum Photonics in Ottawa, a visiting scientist of the Chemistry department of Harvard University, and co-coordinator of the International Max-Planck Research School of Advanced Photon Science (IMPRS-APS).
Jim Kafka
Spectra-Physics, USA
Academia and Industry: Working Together
An examination of the challenges and opportunities for Academia and Industry to collaborate more efficiently.
About the Speaker
Jim Kafka attended the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester, where he obtained a B.S. in Optics in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Optics in 1983, studying with Conger Gabel and Gerard Mourou, the recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. During this pivotal time at Rochester and through his work at the Institute and Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Kafka met many lifelong friends and colleagues, including several future OSA Presidents Susan Houde-Walter, Ian Walmsley and Donna Strickland, who was also awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1983, Kafka started as a Senior Scientist at Spectra-Physics Lasers, where he has held a series of positions with increasing responsibility including Chief Business Unit Technology Officer. He was recently named a Fellow of MKS, the parent company of Spectra-Physics. During the past 36 years, he designed several of the company’s most significant products, including the Tsunami, the first commercial ultrafast Ti:sapphire laser (1990), the Millennia X, the first commercial 10 W solid-state green laser (1997), and the InSight, the first broadly tunable ultrafast source for microscopy (2011). Kafka was recognized as a Spectra-Physics Fellow in 1987. He also received the Thermo Electron Corporate Award for Technical Innovation in 2002 and the first Newport Corporation Strategic Patent Award in 2007 for his patent of the first diode-pumped double-clad fiber laser. Kafka has over 40 United States patents and multiple foreign equivalents. He has more than 30 publications in refereed journals and has made more than 40 presentations at CLEO, OSA topical meetings, SPIE conferences and at major universities. Kafka recently presented a plenary talk at the 2018 IEEE Photonics Conference. Kafka has served the professional community as the Ultrafast Topical Editor for JOSA B (1994-1995), Lasers Technical Group Chair (1995-1997), and on a dozen conference organizing committees. He has served as the CLEO program chair (1999), CLEO general chair (2001) and on the CLEO Steering Committee (1997–2001). He completed a three-year sequence as the Program and General Chair of the Advanced Solid-State Photonics topical meeting (2009-2011). Kafka was named an OSA Fellow in 2005 and served as a Director at Large on the OSA Board of Directors from 2012 to 2014. He was a member (2015) and chair (2016) of the prestigious Charles Hard Townes Medal Committee. One of his favorite contributions to the optics community has been serving as a Distinguished Traveling Lecturer for the APS Division of Laser Science from 1999 to the present.
Schedule
Monday, 20 July
10:30 - 12:00 Introduction
12:00 - 13:00 Meal Break
13:00 - 14:30 Thomas Baer, Stanford University
Photonics in the COVID-19 and Climate Change Era
Facilitators:
- Randy Giles, OSA
- David Lang, OSA
- Armand Niederberger, Noodle.ai
- Yasaman Soudagar, Neurescence Inc.
14:30 - 16:00 Eric Van Stryland, CREOL
Nonlinear Materials Spectroscopy and Causality
Facilitators:
- Nicholas Cox, CREOL
- Sanaz Farydras, CREOL
- Natalia Manera, CREOL
- Hao-Jung (Wilbur) Chang, CREOL
- Sepehr Benis, CREOL
- Salimeh (Sally) Tofighi, CREOL
Tuesday, 21 July
10:30 - 12:00 Poster Session
12:00 - 13:00 Meal Break
13:00 - 14:30 Peter Andersen, Technical University of Denmark
Biophotonics: Better Imaging at Depth
Facilitators:
- Anders K. Hansen, DTU Photonics
- Dominik Marti, DTU Health Tech
- Madhu Veettikazhy, DTU Health Tech
- Philip Wijesinghe, University of St. Andrews
14:30 - 16:00 Panel Discussion and Attendee Chat - Thomas Baer and Eric Van Stryland
Wednesday, 22 July
10:30 - 12:00 Hanieh Fattahi, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light
Laser Spectroscopy at Extreme Limits: From Femtosecond to Attosecond
Facilitators:
- Matthew Weidman, MPI for Quantum Optics
- Francesco Tani, MPI for Science of Light
- Oleg Pronin, Helmut-Schmidt University - Hamburg
- Giulio Vampa, Stanford University
12:00 - 13:00 Meal Break
13:00 - 14:30 Panel Discussion and Attendee Chat - Peter Andersen and Hanieh Fattahi
14:30 - 16:00 Jim Kafka, Spectra-Physics
Academia and Industry: Working Together
Facilitators:
- David Spence, Spectra-Physics
- Alan Petersen, Spectra-Physics
- Tom Sosnowski, Spectra-Physics
Thursday, 23 July
10:30 - 12:00 Andrew Forbes, University of Witwatersrand Johannesburg
The Creation and Control of Structured Light
Facilitators:
- Mitch Cox, University of Witwatersrand
- Issac Nape, University of Witwatersrand
- Wagner Buono, University of Witwatersrand
- Bereneice Sephton, University of Witwatersrand
- Valeria Rodriguez-Fajardo, University of Witwatersrand
- Angela Dudley, University of Witwatersrand
- Darryl Naidoo, CSIR
12:00 - 13:00 Meal Break
13:00 - 14:30 Clara Saraceno, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Ultrafast Lasers: Smaller, Faster, Stronger
Facilitators:
- Frank Meyer, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
- Yicheng Wang, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
- Florian Emaury, Menhir Photonics AG
14:30 - 16:00 Poster Session
Friday, 24 July
10:30 - 12:00 Panel Discussion - Andrew Forbes, Jim Kafka, Clara Saraceno
12:00 - 13:00 Meal Break
13:00 - 14:30 Steven Chu, Stanford University
14:30 - 16:00 Closing Session
