Hangzhou Sessioin

Dennis Gardner

United States

Self-Assembly of Quantum Rods into Defect of Cholesteric Liquid Crystals

Qingdao Sessioin

Qingkun Liu 

China

Assembly and Allignment of Plasmonic Nanoparticles by Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

Beijing Sessioin

Uros Tkalec

Slovenia

Broken Mirrors Symmetry in Nematic Colloids Chiral Dimers and 2D Crystals

Dennis Gardner, Qingkun Liu and Uros Tkalec were awarded the SPIE Best Paper award for their posters presentations at the I-CAMP summer school poster sessions in Beijing, Qingdao, and Hangzhou, respectively. Their presentation has been selected for the Best Paper Award based on the rankings given by the Invited Speakers and local organizers at the respective poster sessions. All three of them will receive the Award Certificate and a check for $200 by mail.  They will also receive the complementary SPIE membership (free of charge).

SPIE Student Chapter Activities

The 2009 I-CAMP summer school brought students together from around the world for three weeks in four Chinese cities: Hangzhou, Shanghai, Qingdao, and Beijing. Students attended lectures given by experts covering nearly all fields of optics and photonics. Given the optically inclined nature of the students attending the summer school organizers recognized that I-CAMP was a special opportunity to introduce the students to SPIE.
SPIE is an international society for advancing light-based research. Although SPIE is mainly comprised of professionals there are currently 141 student chapters of SPIE with 4,300 student members. Two SPIE chapters, the Zhejiang University SPIE Student Chapter and the University of Colorado SPIE Student Chapter, invited all I-CAMP participants and local students to participate in an informal gathering to introduce SPIE student membership benefits and have some fun after a long day of lectures.

There were about 40 students in attendance of this students-only event from at least 10 different countries. The evening’s activities were opened up with a presentation of the Zhejiang SPIE student chapter’s history by the Zhejiang SPIE student president, Jing Hu. She spoke about how the SPIE student chapter was formed, how the chapter as grown over the last two years, and what kinds of activities the chapter organized such as a recent lecture given by Katarina Svanberg from Lund University in Sweden on laser spectrometry for cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Dennis Gardner, president of the University of Colorado SPIE student chapter, followed Jing Hu’s presentation with a discussion of SPIE student member benefits. He spoke about SPIE scholarships, arrange visiting lectures using the SPIE visiting lecture program, and informed everyone about the 600 USD best poster awards, sponsored by SPIE, which were given out during the I-CMAP poster sessions.
The night concluded with entertainment lasting late into the evening. First there were karate demonstrations by a local karate expert. I think his most impressive demonstration was the flipping over of a student one-and-a-half times his size! It was quite an impressive sight. Following the thrilling karate moves were relaxing lessons on traditional Chinese dancing. After some quick lessons of basic Chinese dance movements students showed off their new dancing skills in a dancing competition. It was quite a hilarious sight to see the students trying to outperform their peers.  The night ended with music and a dance party late into the evening.

I think the event was a large success. Not only did students from all over the world learn about Chinese culture while having fun, but they were also were exposed to a professional society, SPIE, that can help them achieve their professional goals in optics and photonics.

In conjunction with the I-CAMP summer school, there will be student events promoting interaction of the students participating in I-CAMP with the local students from Chinese Universities, especially those working in the fields of materials sciences, optics, photonics, imaging, and related fields. These events will promote student leadership by letting student leaders (such as presidents of student chapters of SPIE, MRS, OSA, IEEE from USA, China, and other countries worldwide) to co-ordinate these activities. The students interested in these events are encouraged but do not have to register for the I-CAMP Summer School. The students interested in these events need to contact one of students leaders (see the invitation letter and contact information below).

   Participating Chapters:

• University of Colorado SPIE Student Chapter, Boulder, USA
• Zhejiang University SPIE Student Chapter, Hangzhou, China

   Leadership:

• Dennis Gardner, Email: Dennis.Gardner@Colorado.EDU
• Jing Hu, Email: hujing@coer.zju.edu.cn
• Qingkun Liu, Email: liuqingkun@coer.zju.edu.cn

   Letter from event organizers:

 Download pdf version of the SPIE student chapter invitation letter:  Download

Dennis Gardner, Qingkun Liu and Uros Tkalec were awarded the SPIE Best Paper award for their posters presentations at the I-CAMP summer school poster sessions in Beijing, Qingdao, and Hangzhou, respectively. Their presentation has been selected for the Best Paper Award based on the rankings given by the Invited Speakers and local organizers at the respective poster sessions. All three of them will receive the Award Certificate and a check for $200 by mail.  They will also receive the complementary SPIE membership (free of charge).

Outreach Forum and Early- Career Resources

The I-CAMP summer school will be held in conjunction with an Outreach Forum, which will allow the researchers to share their experience and advances not only in research but also in conducting outreach and disseminating scientific knowledge. All outreach-related lectures will be completely open to public and advertized as such. The industrial partners will be asked to exhibit their products during the breaks and poster sessions. There will be no required registration fee to participate in the outreach and early-career  parts of the I-CAMP Summer School Program in order to promote participation by young scientists and general public.

Liquid Crystal Mood Patches: Presentation & Hands-On Experience,
Stephen Jacobs, University of Rochester, USA | View Video Archive |

Laser Tweezers: Moving Thins Without Touching
Ivan Smalyukh, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA | View Video Archive |

What Should You Know Besides Your Research
to Become a Successful Professor?,
Douglas K Duncan, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA

Delivering Good Scientific Presentations,
Richard Youngworth, Light Capture, Inc., USA | View Video Archive |

Examples of the Best Outreach Practices

Student experiences

The ICAMP summer school was a great way to see the bigger picture of photonics and metamaterials since we had lecturers talking about everything from synthesis of small molecules for discotic liquid crystals to using metamaterials to make an invisibility cloak.  The overriding theme of the school was controlling light, but the diversity of approaches from 3-D laser etching to carbon nanotubes was amazing.  It’s fascinating to learn about the broad applications of nanoparticles in organic solar cells, targeted cancer therapy, and atomolar DNA detection systems.  While lectures on the synthesis and functionalization nanoparticles gave me useful ideas for my own research. Visiting China for the first time and meeting people from around the world  was amazing. I enjoyed meeting distinguished professors like Phillip Russell, inventor of Photonic crystal fibres, and Harry Coles, who made a blue phase stable from 60 to -20 Celsius as well as fellow aspiring researchers from across the globe.  Seeing China firsthand gave me a much better understanding of the history and culture.  The constant bargaining over price was always fun and the food was amazing.
—Julian Evans

The concept of an inter-continental summer school for advanced materials and photonics is tempting in its idea form itself but I found its beautiful execution and impeccable implementation in China during the summer of 2009. There can be few better ways to spend one’s summer learning about the most advanced research in the areas of one’s interest while imbibing a great foreign culture.  

The academic benefits of the summer school can hardly be overstated. Learning about advancements in fields varying from solar cells to metamaterials to carbon-nanotubes gave a broad exposure to a graduate student like myself.  Some of the topics immediately resonated with my personal research interests like the lectures given by Prof. Lim, who elucidated upon many of my questions on coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy and imparted insights into some of the subtler aspects involved therein. For someone like me, who has used a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) for one particular non-linear application, the talk by Prof. Philip Russel on the multitude of applications of different types of PCFs and the novel kinds of experiments that can be done using them (e.g., guiding a particle through the core of a hollow-core PCF) was illuminating. The talk by Prof. Srinivasrao was inspiring in bringing forth the realization that nature has a lot of hidden beauties and the study of origins of colors of moths and beetles involves beautiful and unexpectedly new physics.
The freedom with which one could ask questions candidly to the speakers was an important factor that made the talks all the more useful to students coming with different backgrounds. There would always be the wonderful opportunities to talk to the speaker informally during the dinners and bus-rides and let them expound on certain aspects of individual interest from the talks.
We enjoyed our time outside the lecture halls as much as inside them. The trips to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Olympic stadium etc. were in no way less responsible in making the trip memorable as the talks were. The local organizers and battalion of volunteers were always there to guide in the smallest of the matters like hailing a taxi – especially useful to students like me who did not know a single word of Mandarin before going to China, and my thanks can never be enough for their ever-enthusiastic help.
It’s all this and much more that has made the summer school one of the unforgettable events I’ll recall sweetly when looking back at my graduate-student life.
—Rahul Trivedi

Early Career Program Features

• EARLY-CAREER Panel Discussion: “Milestones of Scientific Careers in Academia, Industry, National Labs & Beyond” | View Video Archive |
  Discussion Moderator: Joe MacLennan, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, USA
  Panel Members: Daniel Cox, Univ. of California at Davis and the International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter, USA; Tom Furtak, Colorado School of Mines, USA; Satyendra Kumar, Kent State Univ. & the National Science Foundation, USA; Sergio Restaino, Naval Research Laboratory, USA; Dave Walba, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, USA; Rachel Pei Chin Won, Nature Publishing Group, Japan; Richard Youngworth, Light Capture, Inc., USA

• Careers in Academia, Industry, National Labs, & Beyond: Job searching, CV writing, and Interviewing, Cori Shaff, Career Services, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA | View Video Archive |

•  Graduate students and postdocs are strongly encouraged to attend and present at the workshop.
• Up to 20 travel/participation fellowships are available to defray participation-related expenses of young scientists.
• We will strive to provide inexpensive housing for the junior scientists participating in the I-CAMP summer school.
• A special Career Development Program for early-career scientists is planned (including presentations on CV writing & job searching skills).
• Best Student Poster Presentations Prizes will be awarded.
•  Students and postdocs at the organizing institutions in China and USA will be actively involved in organizing the summer school.
• We will hold three poster sessions (one per each week/topic of the school) & will strive to provide an ideal setting for interactions between senior & junior scientists.
• We strongly encourage the workshop participants to develop collaborations and take advantage of the ICAM-I2CAM exchange awards in order to pursue research projects related to the topics of the I-CAMP summer school.