These bi-weekly pizza presentations take place in Keck Hall, room 105, at 12:00 PM every first and third Thursday of the month.
General Topics
- A journal club about a paper you think is really cool.
- Historical journal presentations: Have you seen a really cool, well-written paper from annals of awesome research that is relevant to photonics (say, by someone like Sommerfeld, Mie, Faraday, Fano, etc...).
- Perhaps a fun biographical sketch of a scientist or a historical overview of a body of pioneering scientific work from your part of the world that is not well known the west. An example that springs to mind is the large and impressively cool astronomical observatories (Google suggests they were called Jantar Mantars) commissioned by the Mughal emperors in the late 18th century in India come to mind.
- A tutorial on something you think is an interesting subject that others would find useful but is not really covered in classes. This could be a general introduction to OCT or a more practical tutorial on a nifty laboratory technique like an easy way of setting up a Foucault knife-edge test or how to cheat aligning fibers.
- Organize outside speakers that would not normally be part of the academic speaker series on campus. Two examples:
- engineers or scientists working in industry
- professors from the medical center to talk about how they actually use optics in clinical applications. Industrial speakers in particular may be of interest as I know many people are planning on non-academic careers and may be interested in hearing what the world outside academia is actually like or how optics and photonics are used in industrial settings.
- Or something completely different that you cleverly though up!
Specific Topics
- How an optical mouse works.
- Isolated Single-Cycle Attosecond Pulses
G. Sansone et al., Science 314(5798) 443-446 (2006).
