Optics conferences

2010-05-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

Different from journal publications, conferences provide researchers from world-wide range an opportunity to meet face to face, and learn about the most recent research from peers in the timely manner.

Typically it takes about at least three months to get a manuscript published on a journal based on my personal experience. Let's say you start to prepare a manuscript after you get some exciting results worth to publish. It takes some time to figure out the story line, check the literature, prepare high-quality figures, and finally put every piece together. Then you will send the manuscript to your co-authors to make sure that they are okay with the manuscript. Normally a manuscript has to be revised extensively by your co-authors and also by yourself. Now you get an okay from your co-authors and finally submit the manuscript to the editorial office of a journal. It still takes quite a lot time for the editor to find several ad-hoc reviewers for your manuscript. The review process can take several weeks depending on the journal's policy. Base on the reviewers' recommendations, the editor will make the decision to accept, or ask you to revise, or reject your manuscript. The process can be frustrating, particularly with prestigious journals. You can sigh with relief after the editor finally decides to accept your manuscript. But still it will take a while before your manuscript is turned into a paper - it takes time for production.

It is completely a different story for conference submissions. One feature of conference is that there is a deadline - you will have to submit your paper by that date. Normally you will work extremely hard before that date to get the data needed. A paper submitted to conference is significantly shorter than a journal manuscript. The style policy is not that critical either. All these make it easier for you to prepare a submission in a short time. You will hear about whether your submission is accepted by a fixed date. In short, it takes much less time to report your research in a conference than in a journal. This is why you can always hear about the most recent research in a conference.

Most of the conferences in optics area are organized by the three main professional societies of optics scientists and engineers: Optical Society of America (OSA), IEEE Photonics Society (formerly known as LEOS), and International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE). The two main optics conferences are CLEO and FiO.

CLEO: the most prestigious and highly regarded conference in lasers, electro-optics, and nanophotonics field. It is co-sponsored by the American Physical Society, IEEE Photonics Society, and OSA. The peer-reviewed program is second to none. The acceptance ratio for CLEO is around 75%. The conference organizers work hard to keep the submission rate around this number every year. In some sessions with emerging research topics, the acceptance ratio can lower, 50% for instance.
Annual International Frontier in Optics (FiO) is the longest-standing meeting in optics and photonics. It is organized by the OSA and has a remarkable history of presenting top-quality research presentations. The conference focuses on timely topic in optical sciences and engineering and provides a place for scientists to exchange research and ideas.

CLEO is coming!

2010-04-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

CLEO is the most prestigious conference in optics area. Every year researchers from around the world gather together to hear about the most recent breakthroughs in optics.

Although the full name of CLEO is the Conference of Laser and Electro-Optics, the scope of the conference is far beyond that. It contains almost everything you can think of in optics field. Laser, LED, display, and solar cell are most likely the topics jump in your mind when we talk about optics. Yes, CLEO will feature the most recent technical development in these areas. In addition, we will also be able to learn other "blue-sky" type research in the areas such as nanophotonics, metamaterial, and optofluidics.

I just browsed the online conference program and found out a bunch of topics which are the most interesting to me - just list a few here as you might be interested as well.

- How to control the activity of single neuron cells with light? Normally this can be only be done electrically by using a technique called patch-clamp or a micro-electrode array. But now Prof. Ming Wu's group at Berkeley developed a way to control neuronal activity with light by using amorphous silicon light addressable electrodes. My guess is that this is something extended from their previous technology called optoelectronic tweezers (check out their Nature paper in 2005).

- How to beat the diffraction limit? Prof. W. E. Moerner at Stanford will present his recent research in single-molecular approaches for super-resolution imaging and trapping. It will be a 1-hour tutorial talk and should be very informational. If you are interested in finding out how to take an optical microscopic image with the resolution of only 10s of nanometers, you should go and check it out!

- Interested in renewable energy related stuffs? This is the session you might want to attend as it includes the recent photovoltaics research (silicon thin-film, surface plasmon enhanced, and polymer).

- Are you a big fan of nanophotonics like me? This is an interesting talk about a color-sensitive quantum-dot based photodetector with its quantum efficiency enhanced by metal nanoparticles. For those of you who are not familiar with quantum dots, they are semiconductor material but with the sizes only 10-20 nm. That talk will show us how to make a nanoscale device which can detect weak light signal and convert it into electricity. The technique can potentially be used someday in building a nanoscale photonic integrated circuit.

To be continued...

The promise of photonics

Optics conferences

CLEO is coming!