Reunions

Thanks

Thank you for following

The first episode of my travels and research in North America is drawing to a close. It’s been wonderful and I have many people to thank.

Large back packs and a poster tube for research and travel.

I have visited people in 9 universities and 3 companies in the last 8 weeks. Thank you for giving me your time. I have enjoyed having the opportunity to discuss my research, my outreach & education work, and my plans for the future. It has been a true pleasure to meet you and find out what you do and what drives you.

Thank you to the organisations that have supported me throughout: the OSA, the SPIE, the University of Southampton and its’ Optoelectronics Research Centre, for providing me with the means and the networks to reach out to places far and wide and assist me in crafting my research adventure.

Thank you to all the people that I have met along the way. The new meetings have been rich and inspiring, the reunions have been great. I wish that I will see you again soon.

Thanks to the Lightwave team — A Powerpoint-thanks to the Lightwave team, as seen during my conference presentations.

Thank you to all of you that got me here, kept in touch, and followed the blog; you, unknowingly perhaps, kept me going throughout. My supervisors, Peter and James, for letting me go ahead with this project. Stephan, for encouraging me to blog and enhancing this space with cool maps, videos and a subscriber mailing list. The Lightwave team, all of you who make me feel a part of this wonderful community of research, education and inspiration; it was an honour to present our work at an international conference and tour our kit across North America. And of course, my family, and Mum, Dad, Rebecca for being there, always; and Becky, love of my life.

Thank you all

A surprise reunion with Becky at London Heathrow on my way back! — A surprise reunion with Becky at London Heathrow on my way back.

Visites à Montréal

When in Montreal…

Parlons français! // French spoken here!

À Montréal c’est pratique d’être bilingue! Je passe la semaine chez Laurie, une très chère amie de mes années collégiennes et lycéennes en France. C’ést génial de passer du temps avec elle à découvrir la ville et rencontrer ses amis. Par le plus grand hasard Max, un ami d’enfance, habite à Montreal aussi!

Je profite d’être en ville pour continuer mon tour des universités de l’Amérique du Nord. La population étudiante montréalaise est énorme, avec pas moins de 9 universités à travers la ville. Ça me permet donc de visiter la ville en allant d’un campus à un autre, et j’ai la chance de pouvoir me déplacer avec un vélo emprunté à une des collocs de Laurie.

My bike for my week in Montreal. — En vélo à Montreal.

J’ai donc commencé par une visite à McGill, une université plutôt anglophone. Lors de ma conférence à Vancouver j’ai rencontré un chercheur, Sasa Ristic, et il m’a invité à visiter son labo lors de mon passage en ville. Il travaille avec un outil pour faire de la nanolithographie, c’est à dire l’écriture de formes avec des tailles à l’échelle du nanomètre, soit 1,000 à 100,000 fois plus petites que l’épaisseur d’un de nos cheveux.

Pour quoi faire? Les transistors, par exemple, qui font fonctionner nos téléphones et nos ordinateurs se miniaturisent depuis plus de 50 ans, et aujourd’hui leur taille est à l’échelle du nanomètre. Des outils d’ingénierie ont été développés pour créer ces composants nanométriques, et en ce faisant les chercheurs ont su identifier d’autres opportunités pour l’utilisation de ces machines de ‘nanofabrication’. Me voilà donc en compagnie d’un outil dont on commence à rechercher comment l’employer pour des nouvelles techniques de fabrication.

En compagnie du NanoFrazor de SwissLitho AG à McGill.

Je suis passé visité l’Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal pour rencontrer le comité de leur association étudiante OSA et SPIE. C’est très inspirant de voir ce que d’autres groupes autour du monde mettent en œuvre pour leur membre. Ils organisent des séminaires sur comment rédiger des articles scientifiques, des concours de culture générale entre étudiants et professeurs, et participent à des festivals de science pour le grand public, tels que le festival Eurêka qui se déroule au Vieux Port de Montreal. Me voici avec Jean-Sébastien en train de de voir le monde à travers les yeux de différents animaux!

Comment voir le monde autrement, avec des casques et des mirroirs.

Je fus particulièrement impressionné d’apprendre que les associations étudiantes en photoniques dans l’est du Canada se retrouvent tous les ans pour discuter et organiser des rassemblements internationaux d’étudiants pour une conférence.

Merci à tous pour l’accueil chaleureux lors de mon séjour en ville!

Boulder wrap-up

Boulder has been great. I hope you saw the pictures and my post about my visit to NIST.

Last Thursday I had a mini industry day. I started the day with coffee with David Giltner, product manager at Zolo technologies, and who I, and the University of Southampton Optics and Photonics Society, have invited to Southampton to give a talk to try and answer the question “Can a scientist find a rewarding career in industry?” That’ll be on September 13th, stay tuned!

I followed up with a visit to Vescent Photonics in Golden. They, amongst other things, help take scientific ideas and make them into products. They are doing some really exciting work on packaging lasers, and I talked about some of the work that fellow PhD student Stephen Lynch is working on.

On Friday I visited the University of Colorado Boulder. Their OSA-SPIE chapter showed me around their labs. They are working on some really cool stuff, including portable LIDAR systems for remote sensing in water (see Rory holding his portable system below), optical filters (think light) that you can tune with acoustic waves (think sound) for spectroscopy imaging, and silicon photonics for light-based computing. It was great to meet the chapter, who organised for me to present my research. I also caught up on Monday to present the outreach kit I am touring.

Rory Barton-Grimley with his single photon LIDAR.

Scientists and engineers love acronyms. Who can guess what ARSNL and SQUIDS stand for?

Here they are:

ARSNL: Active remote sensing lab
SQUIDS: Superconducting quantum interference devices

It’s not all people though. What’s kept me from writing here has been writing up two papers that I will be presenting at the SPIE Optics Education and Outreach conference that I’m attending in San Diego at the end of the month. Last week was spent writing in every possible break and 12+ hours day at the weekend. Thankfully I have a brilliant group of co-authors to review my words, and it was all submitted by Monday.

I felt like I deserved a break on my last day in town and headed out for a bike ride. It was a glorious day, pushing my body and bike up over the top of mountains. Super happy to have ridden to above the 3,000 metre mark. The descent was totally worth it though, as was the beer and pizza after!

Brainard lake, on a bike. My first ride ever over 3,000 metres!

Next up is Toronto. Hope you can tune in. You can now subscribe to updates to not miss any of my posts or gallery updates.

Thanks again for following!

West Canadian Highlights

I’m leaving Canada and felt like I should reflect on the highlights from this first stage.

Presenting at an international conference and doing outreach there was great. Super pleased with the quality of the talks I heard and discussions I had. My talk was recorded by the Optical Society as an added bonus, although with restricted access to members.

Presenting my research at the OSA Advanced Photonics at the Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver

Driving through British Columbia and Alberta is a must if you like a road trip. The scenery was beautiful; I hoped you enjoyed the pictures! I should have set up a selfie booth in the car to capture the moments shared on the road with Anna, Peter, Flintstone, Tim, Xavier and Diana.

Tim Cline (left), travel companion and host in Revelstoke

Kelowna was an awesome place. The cycling was amazing, and the atmosphere of the town super friendly. Eternally grateful to Tim for letting me crash at his for a few days. On my list of places to check out in winter.

Giving a talk on my research and life as a PhD student in Southampton for the University of Calgary’s Student Optics and Photonics Society was a great experience, as was the added bonus of visiting loads of cool research labs.

Presenting my work on integrated polarising couplers.

Finally, there were some unexpected reunions along the way. Great to catch up with Shanghai-Fudan-buddy Wayne and his girlfriend Louise in Vancouver, and bump into Eleonora and Federico from the Grenoble Nanotechnology Class of 2013 in Vancouver and Banff!

Unexpected catch-up in downtown Vancouver with Wayne, a friend from my time in Shanghai in 2008

Next up is Boulder, Colorado in the USA. Thanks for reading. Watch this space for more research and adventures.

The people I have met along the path of my life have provided me with incredible experiences and developed me as a researcher, a friend, and a person.

Jane was a student at UCL when my Dad went to University. It has been 10 years since I last visited in sunny San Diego!

I lived and studied in Shanghai, China, back in 2009. Here is the Fudan University crew reunited at Venice beach, Los Angeles, CA.

China reunion with Chris at the Golden Gate bridge.

High school reunion in Montreal with Laurie #montrealselfies

I discovered I had extended family in Toronto, and had the pleasure to meet up during my stay in town!

Sun and good French company — Sun and good company

There have been many people along the way. If you recognise any of these people from this non extensive series of pictures, then I hope that we can get in touch to organise our own reunion and share our space on this blog during the coming months.