Stanford University Student SPIE Chapter

Annual Report

Feb. 2012 – Jan. 2013

Officers

Kristen Anand (Co-President) 3391219

Sam Bockenhauer (Co-President) 3318251

Robert Chen (Vice President) 3391640

Stephen Wolf (Treasurer) 3499730

Jessica Piper (Speakers Chair) 3420715

Nikolas Tezak (Membership Chair) 3455567

Patrick Landreman (Outreach Chair) 3454572

Table of Contents

Chapter Programming ............................................................................................................................... 1 Special events/collaborative events........................................................................................................... 1

Stanford University Photonics Retreat .................................................................................................. 1

Nightlife at California Academy of Sciences ....................................................................................... 4

SF Giants Game with Berkeley PhotoBears ......................................................................................... 5

Fall Kickoff BBQ .................................................................................................................................. 6

Technical events/professional development ............................................................................................. 7

Seminar Series ...................................................................................................................................... 7

Photonics Pioneers/Visionary Innovation Lunch Series ....................................................................... 8

Career Development Dinner ................................................................................................................. 9

Recruitment/other.................................................................................................................................... 10

Summer BBQ ...................................................................................................................................... 10

Website ............................................................................................................................................... 11

Elections.............................................................................................................................................. 12

Outreach .................................................................................................................................................... 13 Bay Area Maker Faire ......................................................................................................................... 13

Exploratory Experiences ..................................................................................................................... 15

Stanford Educational Studies Program “SPLASH!” (Fall and Spring) .............................................. 16

Stanford Engineering EDay ................................................................................................................ 17

International Student Photography Contest ........................................................................................ 18

Bay Area Science Festival Discovery Day ......................................................................................... 19

Appendices ................................................................................................................................................. 20 Member Roster ................................................................................................................................... 20

Finances .............................................................................................................................................. 22

1

Stanford University Photonics Retreat

Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, CA

April 13-15, 2012

75 participants

The 2012 Stanford University Photonics Retreat (SUPR) was again a great success! The weekend event,

organized by members of our student chapter, united roughly 70 participants representing the diverse

photonics community at Stanford and beyond: graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, invited

speakers and faculty guests. The Stanford academic participants spanned seven separate departments in

three schools, representing twenty different research groups. In addition, there were three student

participants from U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Davis.

Our program was held in April at the beautiful Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove California.

We started SUPR Friday evening with a welcome reception and dinner to allow the diverse set of

participants to meet one another. Next, our first keynote talk was given by Dr. Douglas Hall, a longtime

contributor to optics and photonics research and manufacturing notably at Corning and currently the

Department of Energy. The talk was followed by the first of two student technical poster sessions. The

evening ended with a rousing team trivia competition, which helped participants “break the ice” and get

to know each other in a fun way.

Saturday’s events began early with breakfast and the first of the four invited faculty speakers, Prof. Phil

Bucksbaum, followed by Prof. Sindy Tang. Next was the second student poster session. Then, attendees

were given free time to socialize, with many heading to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Pebble Beach, Big

Sur, and 17-mile Drive. A reception and dinner followed. The second keynote address was by Dr. Ray

Beausoleil, who is a HP Fellow and leader of the Large-Scale Integrated Photonics Group at HP Labs.

2

The day’s schedule concluded with a career panel discussion, which allowed the four panelists

representing academic, national laboratory, industry, and startup environments to provide their unique

perspectives on how to build a successful career. The panel discussion ended with a post-panel mixer to

allow attendees to talk one-on-one with panelists.

Sunday morning began with an early breakfast and then an insightful workshop Patents & Photonics by

Linda Chao of the Stanford Office of Technology Licensing. The interactive workshop taught attendees

about the patenting procedures at Stanford and about the licensing process. The remaining two faculty

lectures, given by Prof. David Miller and Prof. Daniel Palanker, followed. Student poster awards were

then announced. Finally, lunch was held and the retreat was adjourned.

With the Stanford optics community spread across so many disciplines, we feel that SUPR is an

invaluable experience to help foster collaboration amongst the diverse group of researchers working on

optics at Stanford. We are already looking forward to our fifth annual retreat, to be held April 12-14, 2013

at the DoubleTree Hotel Sonoma Wine Country in Rohnert Park, CA.

3

Scenes from SUPR 2012. Clockwise from top left: Dr. Douglas Hall, Prof. David Miller, meeting new friends during trivia

icebreaker, the Patents & Photonics workshop, conversation over lunch, poster session discussion.

4

Nightlife at California Academy of Sciences

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA

April 5, 2012

30 participants

We organized an evening museum trip to “Nightlife” for Stanford and Berkeley chapter students. This

monthly event presented at the California Academy of Sciences caters to young professionals, including

drinks, music, and a social atmosphere to complement the usual science exhibits and optics-related

displays.

5

SF Giants Game with Berkeley PhotoBears

AT&T Park, San Francisco, CA

May 1, 2012

30 participants

We hosted a joint social event with Berkeley PhotoBears at a Giants home game on May 1st this year.

The event was a good opportunity to share some time on a common goal: Giant’s winning the game!

Stanford and Berkeley students taking in a Giants game together.

6

Fall Kickoff BBQ

Stanford, CA

October 11, 2012

100-150 participants

We hosted a fall kickoff barbeque to start the academic year and to recruit new members. The purpose of

the event was to maintain and strengthen the student chapter’s presence among the Stanford science and

engineering community, and strengthen the social glue within the Stanford SPIE community. During the

BBQ we encouraged new membership, informed students of upcoming SPIE events, and, of course,

socialized.

Optical society members meeting up to learn about our upcoming events and have some BBQ!

7

Seminar Series

Stanford OSA/SPIE organizes technical seminars in a variety of optics-related fields for the general

public. Most seminars are held on Stanford campus in the Science & Engineering Quadrangle.

Time/Place Speaker (Institution) Title Attendance

Various Photonics Pioneers lunch series

Thursday, April 05,

4:00 PM, CISX 101 Peter Kiesel (Palo Alto

Research Center) Opto-fluidic Detection System

Enabling Sophisticated Point-of-care

Diagnostics

35

Thursday, April 26,

4:00 PM, CISX 101 Zhilong Rao (JDSU) Product Engineering at JDSU 25

Thursday, May 10th,

4:00 PM, CISX 101 Aydogan Ozcan

(UCLA) Lensfree On-Chip Microscopy and

Tomography Toward Telemedicine

Applications

20

Friday, May 11, 4:00

PM, CISX 101 Ci-Ling Pan (National

Tsing Hua University,

Taiwan)

Recent Progress in Photonic-

Network-Compatible Sub-THz-wave

wireless links at data rate of 20 Gb/s

25

Monday, May 14,

6:30 PM, GCC Sami Hendow Micromachining with Nanosecond

and Femtosecond Pulsed Lasers

20

Thursday, November

29, 4:15pm, Spilker

(Nano) 232

Zachi Baharav

(Corning) A vision for a connected world 45

Thursday, December

6, 4:15pm, Spilker

(Nano) 232

Jerome Ballesta

(Imagine Optic) Improvement of 3D localization in

PALM, STORM and single particle

tracking by using adaptive optics

40

Thursday, December

7, 10:15am, Spilker

(Nano) 143

Prof. Lynford Goddard

(UIUC) Reflective Microrings for Compact

Single Wavelength Lasers

15

Thursday, Jan 17,

Spilker 232 Prof. Andrea Armani

(USC)

Suspended silica integrated photonic

devices

25

Thursday, Jan 31,

Spilker 232 Dr. Robb Walters

(Integrated

Plasmonics)

Reflections on building a business based

on nanophotonics

Speakers’ Talk Summaries: are available via the links in the table above, and on our website, http://photons.stanford.edu.

8

Photonics Pioneers / Visionary Innovation Lunches

The purpose of this program, co-sponsored with SPRC, is to give Stanford students working within the

photonics area the opportunity to meet and talk with some of the pioneers in quantum electronics,

particularly those scientists who have been successful pursuing nonacademic careers. These lunches are

an informal venue for discussing science and technology, the innovative process of converting science

and technology to commercial enterprise, career options and personal history.

Speakers this year:

Dr. Giacomo Vacca, Kinetic River Corp., Thursday, March 1st, 2012, 12pm, Spilker 317

Dr. Greg Papadopoulos, New Enterprise Associates, Thursday, May 24, 2012, Spilker 317

Dr. Jim Kafka, Spectra-Physics, Thursday, November 1, 2012, Huang 305

Scheduled:

Dr. Stephen Eglash, Energy & Environment Affiliates Program, Stanford University

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013 12-1 PM

Lunch seminar with Greg Papadopoulos (NEA)

9

Career Development Dinner

Pasta, Mountain View, CA

December 7, 2012

10 participants

We held a career development dinner for nine students on December 7th, 2012. The purpose of this event

was to introduce student members of the Stanford Optical Society to a professional established in an

optics-related field and encourage informal discussion about career options after Stanford. On the

recommendation of a Stanford alumnus, our professional speaker was Dr. Ferey Faridian, the president of

IFOS. IFOS is a Santa Clara based company that designs and manufactures optical sensing systems.

Students were chosen on a first-come, first-serve basis after notifying the Stanford Optical Society.

10

Summer Retreat Reunion BBQ

Stanford, CA

June 28, 2012

100-150 participants

The Summer Retreat Reunion BBQ served many functions for our Stanford OSA-SPIE student chapter.

First, we actively recruited new members to our student chapter. We also made an announcement of our

upcoming fall events and encouraged students to volunteer in our outreach functions or participate in our

seminar series. Last, our BBQ provided a forum for the participants of our Stanford University Photonics

Retreat (SUPR) to reunite on campus. Since these participants represent many optics disciplines from

departments across Stanford University, they had an opportunity to network and forge research

collaborations. We believe that by providing a fun yet informative social gathering of student

professionals, we effectively promoted our OSA-SPIE chapter to the larger Stanford community.

Chapter members take a break from research at the end of the year BBQ.

11

Website and Publicity

Our chapter continues to use and improve our award-winning website. This website, based on a "content

management system," allows all of the executive team members to easily add content and update their

own sections. Our website contains information about upcoming events as well as an archive of previous

events. Additionally, the site is integrated with our events schedule on Google Calendar and a Picasa

online photo gallery with pictures from many of our events. News updates are automatically sent out to

our chapter Twitter account, which has nearly 300 followers. We capture video of many of the seminars

hosted by our chapter and post these on our website, greatly expanding the reach of our activities. Group

files can be shared privately on our chapter fileserver, which allows us to keep all of our information in

one place and ensure smooth leadership transitions from year to year.

Our chapter maintains a mailing list with 500+ active e-mail addresses for distributing announcements, as

well as an additional e-mail list of approximately 300 local middle school and high school science

teachers that we occasionally send announcements about our outreach events to.

Our website: http://photons.stanford.edu

12

Elections

Elections for the 2012-2013 Executive Planning Team were held on May 22, 2012. A pizza lunch was

provided. We had record participation!

The 2012-2013 Executive Planning Team

President (SPIE Affairs): Kristen (Boucher) Anand (Solgaard Group)

President (OSA Affairs): Samuel Bockenhauer (Moerner Group)

Vice President: Robert Chen (Harris Group)

SUPR Chair: Matthew Lew (Moerner Group)

Secretary: Marissa Lee (Moerner Group)

Treasurer: Stephen Wolf (Byer Group)

Membership Chair: Nikolas Tezak (Mabuchi Group)

Membership Committee: Peter McMahon, Cathy Jan

Outreach Chairs: Marina Radulaski (Vuckovic Group) and Patrick Landreman (Brongersma Group)

Outreach Committee: Marissa Lee, Tom Gwinn, Adam Backer, Nikolas Tezak, Stephen Wolf, Mark

Brinton, Ken Leedle, Sandy Kjono

Speaker Chair: Jessica Piper

Speaker Committee: Alok Vasudev, Mikael Backlund, Lucien Weiss, Farzaneh Afshinmanesh, Robert

Hartsock, Yu-Wei Lin, Ken Wang, Mark Brinton

Social Media Chair: Lucien Weiss (Moerner Group)

13

Bay Area Maker Faire

San Mateo County Event Center, San Mateo, CA

May 19-20, 2012

1,000-2,000 visitors to our exhibit

We presented a booth at the 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire http://makerfaire.com/bayarea/2012/ . Our

booth, titled "Laser Craze," had four separate sections: Laser Maze, Laser Etch Sketch, IR camera, and

Persistence of Vision. Our laser maze was modeled after the laser protection systems seen in many

movies where you have to do acrobatics to avoid detection in order to steal something valuable. This year

we upgraded the Maze considerably by making solid walls to hold fog in and improving stability. Our

maze had a fog machine so that the beams could be seen as well as music playing, which changed to a

buzzer sound if the path was broken. For safety, the laser turned off if anything broke the beam path and

had to be reset by the attendant. The Laser Etch Sketch was a variation on the children's toy Etch A

Sketch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etch_A_Sketch, which had similar knobs but burned the pattern into

paper with a laser rather than using magnets and aluminum filings. This system had a safety viewing

window. We improved this part of the exhibit this year by finding better paper, which absorbed more of

the laser wavelength and created sharper images. We also had an infrared camera with a monitor so

people could see themselves in the IR, people had a fun time seeing which parts of them were cold and

hot. Finally we had some LED wands which had different images that could only be seen when people

waved them back and forth rapidly. This demo was able to show persistence of vision.

There were 110,000 people in attendance this year, and a large number of those people came by our

exhibit. We were better prepared for the crowd this year, since we had participated in the 2011 Faire. In

all, we had 22 members help with the Faire, which was an awesome turnout for an outreach activity. Our

laser maze was upgraded and looked a lot more professional this year which made it that much more fun!

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From top left clockwise: Attendee tries her luck at making it though the laser maze without sounding the alarm, Nick

Leindecker manning booth with the IR camera, persistence of vision wands, and laser etch-a-sketch, attendee makes a

work of art on the laser etch-a-sketch, kids play with the persistence of vision wands.

Wall of fame at the end of the laser maze, participants signed their name with a highlighter that glowed under black light.

15

Exploratory Experiences

Onetta Harris Community Center, Redwood City, CA

March 9, 2012

30 participants

The Exploratory Experiences Program creates an opportunity for students eighth grade and up to meet,

talk with, and potentially work with experts in the student’s fields of interest. This could include fields

such as medical research, computer technology, solar research, bio fuels generation, marine biology,

surgical innovation, governmental systems, theatre production, music management, and mental health

programs. The program is sponsored by the International Healing Foundation and serves students in east

Menlo Park and East Palo Alto.

Our group did a 2 hour hands-on presentation to the students in this program. More information about the

program can be found at their website: http://www.exploratoryexperiences.org/index.html

16

Stanford Educational Studies Program “SPLASH” Courses

Stanford, CA

April 21-22 & November 4, 2012

90 participants

The Stanford chapter worked with the Stanford Educational Studies program to teach a short overview

course on optics to interested students in local middle and high schools, some of which included low

socioeconomic school districts. Each class was 45 minutes long, and focused on demonstrations,

encouraging further interest in optics while instilling an understanding of its fundamental principles. It did

this by combining an examination of the physics involved with an overview and examples of applications

which the students have encountered in their lives. Topics included waveguides, Snell’s law, polarization,

color, and fluorescence. Registrations filled up quickly – we taught 6 sessions of 15 students each (3

sessions at both the Spring & Fall events. For more information: http://www.stanfordesp.org/

17

Stanford Engineering EDay

Stanford, CA

July 21, 2012

100 participants

Stanford Engineering eDay (http://engineering.stanford.edu/portals/alumni/eday/eday-2012 ) has an

interactive program for Stanford Alumni's children. We took part with "Optical Illusions" in which we

taught principles of reflection and refraction.

Students explore the principles of fiber optic communications

18

International Student Photography Contest

International

November 1 – December 14, 2012

600 participants

We held our 4th Biannual Student Photography Contest this year. This year's theme was Light in Nature.

Photos were electronically submitted through our online form during the month of November. The event

was advertised internationally to students from ages 12-18. Each photo was submitted with a description

of the photo and many entries explained the optical properties that were shown in their photo. We

received over 600 entries from students across the world. Final judging will be done by Stanford

Professors in optics and art. The top 14 images will be made into a calendar and top winners will receive

photo related prizes totaling over $1000. The top prize is a Lytro camera. Winning photos and honorable

mentions will be displayed at http://photons.stanford.edu

Sample of photos submitted by students across the world

19

Bay Area Science Festival Discovery Day

AT&T Park, San Francisco, CA

November 3, 2012

20,000 event attendees

As part of the second Bay Area–wide Science Festival the Stanford Optical Society participated in a

Discovery Day at AT&T Park (home of the San Francisco Giants) in San Francisco on November 3. We

prepared a variety of fun optics demonstrations suitable for large crowds to show this event, which had an

attendance of about 20,000 people. We had hands on demos showing waveguides, Snell’s law,

polarization, color, and fluorescence.

More information can be found on the event website: http://www.bayareascience.org/

20

Member Roster

Total Student Members (as of Feb 2013): 32

Name Expires

Christy Amwake 9 February 2013

Kristen Anand 20 January 2014

Sercan Arik 2 February 2013

Ross Audet 3 June 2013

Mikael Backlund 15 January 2014

Samuel Bockenhauer 4 January 2014

Michael Celentano 11 February 2013

Majid Esfandyarpour 8 February 2013

Dodd Gray 25 June 2013

Taylor Greason 7 November 2013

Ruo Yu Gu 6 January 2014

Wenqiong Guo 19 February 2013

Kirk Ingold 14 October 2013

Sandra Kjono 4 February 2013

DongHoon Lee 8 November 2013

Angie Lin 10 June 2013

Emma Marriott 4 January 2014

Tahereh Marvdashti 11 February 2013

Vijay Narasimhan 10 July 2013

Dmitri Pavlichin 18 March 2013

Christian Perez 11 February 2013

Jessica Piper 4 January 2014

Charles Rudy 30 December 2013

Salil Soman 1 December 2013

Ray Sun 22 February 2013

Emel Tasyurek 5 January 2014

Nikolas Tezak 7 February 2014

Nina Vaidya 23 February 2013

Adam Wang 31 January 2014

Ken Wang 14 February 2013

Stephen Wolf 26 September 2013

Xiang Zhang 6 February 2013

21

Total Alumni Members (as of Feb 2013): 23

Name Graduation Date

Peter Catrysse (not available)

Jonathan Liu (not available)

Michelle Povinelli (not available)

Rostislav Roussev Jan 2007

Hatice Altug Jan 2010

James Hawley (not available)

Yuzuru Takashima Jun 2007

Yang Wang Sep 2007

Jan Bogdanski Apr 2009

Andrei Faraon Sep 2009

Paulina Kuo Sep 2008

Ragip Pala Sep 2010

Linyong Pang Jun 2000

Yannis Paulus Jun 2009

Xiaobo Yin Sep 2008

Young Chul Jun Jun 2010

Lance Simms Oct 2009

Thomas O'Sullivan Jan 2011

Christopher Sramek Jun 2010

Rocky Arnold (not available)

Jie Li Aug 2006

Wibool Piyawattanametha Sep 2004

Lieven Verslegers Jan 2012

22

Finances

Chapter Expenses

Election Food -$200.00

IONS Wire Transfers -$800.00

Membership Events

California Academy of Sciences Nightlife -$224.40

SF Giant's Baseball Game -$244.45

Summer BBQ -$338.88

Brochures -$108.38

Fall BBQ -$422.69

Outreach

General Demo Supplies -$221.22

Photocontest Advertising/Website -$91.43

Laser Pointer -$25.78

Rainbow Demo -$64.61

Maker Faire and Laser Maze -$972.53

Seminars

Peter Kiessel Technical Seminar -$18.97

Zhilong Rao Technical Seminar -$144.15

Alumni Dinner -$209.97

Wanguih Ishak Technical Seminar -$55.86

Jerome Ballesta Technical Seminar -$93.07

SUPR

Site Visit -$140.46

SPRC Payment (SUPR 2012) -$3,000.00

Deposits

OSA Activity Grants $2,500.00

SPIE Activity Grants $1,700.00

SPIE Photocontest Funds $1,080.00

Ticket Sales $90.00

T-Shirt Sales $30.00

OSA Crossword $200.00

OSA Student Chapter Excellence Award $1,000.00

Starting Balance $8,563.87

23

Net Expenses -$776.85

Ending Balance $7,787.02