optics chapter eth - spie · optics chapter eth zurich annual report 2015 5/5/2015 4 research talks...

Soumya Sunder Dash | Vice President |[email protected]

5/5/2015

OPTICS CHAPTER ETH

ZURICH ANNUAL REPORT

2015

SPIE Student Chapter of ETH Zurich

We – the Optics Chapter ETH Zurich are a group of enthusiastic students

coming from different academic and cultural backgrounds, united by our

common interest in sharing optics and photonics knowledge.

Optics Chapter ETH Zurich Annual Report 2015 5/5/2015

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Optics Chapter ETH Zurich Annual

Report 2015

SPIE Student Chapter of ETH Zurich

CHAPTER ORGANIZATION There are five officers and one faculty advisor steering the organization:

President – Romain Bonjor

Vice-President – Soumya Sunder Dash

Secretary – Yannick Salamin

Tresurer – Simon Arega Gebrewold

Webmaster – Johannes Heinsoo

Faculty Advisor – Prof. Dr. Ursula Keller

This chapter was officially established since 20th November 2012. This annual report is

divided into three sections. First section is the list of the current members, second section is

a list of official events1 we have had and finally a complete list of the funded events and

financial information giving an overview

of the budget of the chapter.

1 Events marked by * were funded by SPIE activity grants that our chapter was awarded.

Officially SPIE Student Chapter

ETH Zurich since 20th November

2012


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CHAPTER MEMBERS Below is the current chapter member list2:

Romain Bonjour

Soumya Dash

Simon Arega Gebrewold

Johannes Heinsoo

Waiz Karim

Curdin Maissen

Giulio Molinari

Mabel Ruiz-Lopez

Yannick Salamin

Patrick Steiner

Below is the chapter alumni member list2:

Hans-Peter Wegelin

Alexios Tzannis

2 Complied on 25/03/2051


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CHAPTER ACTIVITIES Below is the list of the chapter activity for the session 2014 – 2015.

TEL Solar Visit:

We organized a company excursion to the TEL

Solar, formerly known as Oerlikon Solar which is

located at the Trubbach, Switzerland.

Here the students/participants had the

opportunity to understand the process of the

mass production of the thin film silicon solar

modules with its amorphous and high efficiency

MICROMORPH tamdem technology3.

Students also got an overview of the

international and national solar market and the

impact of photonics in the energy sector.

The trip concluded with a guided tour followed by

a question and answer session.

3 Copyright with TEL Solar


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Research Talks

At ETH Zürich, physics department PhD defenses

and presentations are closed door. Hence we

decided to organize events where recent PhD

graduates are invited to present their thesis

publicly to The ETH community, family, and

friends. We also support the presenting person if

he/she wishes with a small reception after the talk.

On 20th March 2014, we invited Mr. Markus Geiser

to give his PhD talk on “Intersubband Polaritons:

Ultrastrong coupling and THz emitters”.

The event was attended by more than 20-25

participants and followed by a small reception with

cake and drink.

OPTICS CHAPTER ZURICH

All memebers of the ETH community are invited

20 March 20146.30 pmHPF G6

Intersubband Polaritons: Ultrastrong coupling and THz emitters

PhD talk of Markus Geiser

Food and drinks will be served.


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Scientifica 2013

Scientifica is an exhibition organized by the ETH Zurich and University of Zurich to present

the research of the Universities to the Swiss public. Since our student chapter is part of the

daily life at ETH Zurich we decided to use this opportunity to develop an outreach program

and present it with our chapter at the Scientifica Below is quick review of our events

organized in Scientifica 2013 which also accounted for the balance in the efforts of 2014.

The Hands on Lab

we build a hands on optics station

were children and adults could learn

how the eye is working. In addition

we showed how far- or near-sighted

vision can be corrected with glasses

In addition, the concept of fluorescence was

explained with the excitement of olive oil. Last

but not least visitors could measure the power of

their own laser pointer at our booth with the help

of a power meter


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The Laser Maze

We built a laser maze, which challenged children to crawl through several laser beams

without interrupting them, like a secret agent in a vault room. The lasers were placed in a

dark, fog-filled tunnel. A program gave acoustic feedback whenever a visitor blocked one of

the laser beams. Each courageous agent was rewarded with a fluorescent star or a peace of

Swiss chocolate. Surprisingly many adults took part in the adventure, too.


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Coffee and Cake

In order to bring the fellow

researchers closer we planned to

organize a “Coffee and Cake” event.

Herein the graduate students and the

under-graduate students gather

around for an informal discussion

about the recent advancement in the

optics and photonics with some coffee

and delicious cake.

This event not only helped

undergraduates to help their

understanding of cutting edge

research in optics and photonics, but

also helped the doctoral students to

interact with the colleagues from

different labs/institutes thereby

offering them a potential ground to

forge interdisciplinary research

collaborations.

Last but not the least this was the

social event for everyone.

OPTICS CHAPTER ZURICH

Coffee and Cake

All memebers of the ETH community are invited

10 March 2014 3 pm HPT F18


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Election meeting

The past board of the SPIE student chapter stepped-down and made way for the new officers.

The new board is as follows:

President – Romain Bonjor

Vice-President – Soumya Sunder Dash

Secretary – Yannick Salamin

Tresurer – Simon Arega Gebrewold

Webmaster – Johannes Heinsoo


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Christmas Apero

On 18th December 2014 we organized a Christmas Apero at the Institute of Quantum

Electronics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Herein we invited all the people interested in optics

and photonics to join us for an informal get-together where we celebrated the season of

Christmas and also discussed the ideas for the future events at the optics chapter.

This event was welcomed by most of the grad students and as attended by more than 30

students. We had some snacks and drinks for the participants.

Last but not the least it was a very good and memorable way to welcome the new board.

IBM Excursion

We started the year with a company excursion to IBM Zurich Client Center at Rueschilikon,

Switzerland which was organized on 22nd January 2015.

This event was organized by the European physical society student chapter at Konstanz,

Germany and SPIE student chapter at ETH Zurich. More than 25 participants joined us for

the event.

.

We were welcomed by Dr. Christophe Rossel, EPS Present-elect and Fellow (IBM Research

Zurich), who gave us a very good insight of the research inception of IBM Switzerland and

the cutting edge research activities at IBM Research Zurich.

After the small introduction into the activities of IBM the participant had the opportunity to

have a guided tour of the different departments of IBM. Where in the students got a

firsthand look at the cutting edge research of IBM Zurich. This guided tour was followed by a

question and answer session and then an informal coffee break where the students from

Konstanz and Zurich had the opportunity to know about the activities at each other’s

campuses.


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Future Events

Scientifica 2015

Scientifica is an exhibition of academics and researches that are taking place at the ETH

Zurich and the University of Zürich. The target audience is the general Swiss public. A

higher emphasis is given to children and high school students so that they can use the

opportunity to get the glimpse of scientific activities in the two academic institutions.

Multiple departments and research laboratories display basic and informative

demonstrations of the focus of their research. This way they either advertise what they

contribute to the society or attract the public or students to their field of study. In the

previous Scientifica, there were more than 20,000 visitors including significant number of

high school student. More information will be available soon under http://www.scientifica.ch.

As a combined effort, the ETH SPIE Chapter, OSA Chapter, and EPS Chapter will organized

a booth at this year’s Scientifica. We plan to exhibit basic and fundamental optical

experiments with the special aim of advertising the field to the next generation. This year’s

Scientifica will be significant as the theme is Light, which coincides with the international

year of light, 2015. Therefore we expect a lot of demonstrations of applications of optics in the

day to day life. Some of the experiments that we have presented in 2013 will be improve and

reused. In addition we plan to organized experiment with optical fiber cables aiming to

demonstrate that optics is the backbone of our connected world. Additionally, we will

organize fun activities as outreach for children to help gain interest in optics in general.

Expected number of participants: 20’000

Expected outcome: Our goal is to successfully plan a fun, informative and safe

demonstration of optics in different applications. It will thus aim at convincing the

participants that many day to day systems rely on optical technologies. This will help in

attracting the children and high school students to join the optics research in the future. The

booth will also function to inform students about the scientific society local chapters.


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Planned events:

Lasers

One of the widely used light sources are what we

call lasers. Nowadays lasers are widely used in

various applications ranging from recreational

activities such as laser tag to security,

manufacturing and telecommunication. On

Scientifica, we plan to introduce these devices to

the public through fun and attractive ways. One is

he laser maze where children will navigate to a

target without blocking low power lasers. In

addition,

the lasers are used to demonstrate scientific facts

such as how the eye works. Students can measure

the power of the laser light and note impact by

melting a chocolate or blowing a balloon by

illuminating it with the laser light. Audiences can

compete to alight a laser light to a target by

guiding the light by using mirrors. Further

activities are available by using optical demonstration toolkits from international optical

unions such as OSA, SPIE and EPS. Interested participants could have a chat with us for

additional information on specific details on lasers and applications.

Waveguides

Light guiding glass fibres are one of the main technologies

allowing today’s world wide web. The light guiding

mechanism was discovered as early as 1870, when a beam of

light was coupled into a jet of water which it then followed

even when being bent under gravity. We want to set up

different small experiments, using water (from a watering

can) or plastic tubes as

waveguides and flash

lamps or class I laser pointers as light sources. These

experiments will allow old and young to test their skills

at coupling light into the waveguides and show them the

basic guiding mechanisms. Seeing light being bend when

following the medium is something that still remains

fascinating even when to people that are used to working

with optical fibres.


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Communication Link

In optical communication light is used to convey information

between users and providers. So called optical fiber are used to

guide the light from the source to the receiver. A simple optical

communication system comprises a light source, a propagation

medium and a detector. Information can be encoded onto a laser

light and guided through a glass fiber. At the receiver end of the

fiber a detection scheme allows the user to decode the received

information. To demonstrate such a basic optical communication link, we will use a laser

source that can be switched on and off by pushing a button, an optical fiber to guide the light,

and a white sheet to

detect the light. With

this simple set-up, the

visitor can both be on the

transmitter and send

information using Morse

code, or at the detector

and decode the received

information. Doctoral

students working in different field of optical communication will be present and able to

answer visitors’ questions.


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FINANCIAL INFORMATION Chapter budget overview of the year 2014-2015 is presented below:

SPIE student chapter ETH Zürich

total budget 2014 (to M. Mangold 29.01.2014) CHF436.35

Scientifca overhead (to M. Mangold 04.03.2014) CHF307.35

date name receipt-nr amount

18/12/2014 S. A. Gebrewold CHF102.80

17/01/2014 Romain 160.3

total CHF263.10

13.5.14 Frieder Lindenfelser 41.5

13.05.14 Frieder Lindenfelser 29.95

total CHF71.45

27.03.14 Zachary Lapin 96.7

total CHF96.70

10.03.14 Zachary Lapin 12.2

total CHF12.20

27.05.13 Mena Issler 227.2

13.05.13 MOJTABA ABDI 97

total CHF324.20

total CHF0.00

total spent CHF767.65

left from 2013 CHF350.45

total left CHF326.50

breakfast-event 3

Christmas Apero

Company visit OptoTune

Thesis presentation nr 1

Optics and Coffee event

TelSolar company visit

optics chapter eth - spie · optics chapter eth zurich annual report 2015 5/5/2015 4 research talks...

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