Rice Photonic Owls

Organizational Meeting

October 3, 2007

Convened: 12:07 PM

Adjourned: 12:44 PM

Attendees

• Mark Knight
  President
• Nathaniel Grady
  Vice-President
• Nche Fofang
  Treasurer
• Patrick Wheeler
• Surbi Lal
• John Casey (m)
• Ying Hu (m)
• Lissett Bickford (m)
• Brent Cary

Minutes

Nate: Suggests getting a gavel after money comes through

John: T-shirts are a good idea. Do they have official designs?

Mark: We'd design our own. Can use SPIE graphics.

Surbi: Minimum order is $50

John: Reasonable prices - $10 each for 20 or so shirts? It's affordable.

Nate: Bi-weekly pizza talk.

Surbi: Suggested title - Fortnightly Photonic Pizza Talk.

Nate: Exactly!

Nate: One of the members does a short presentation. Photonics related. Technique, background on a topic,

Surbi: Latest Harry Potter movie...

Mark: Historical journal club would fit into this nicely. Discuss founding papers in the field. NSOM. Negative index of refraction.

Nate: Early laser papers: first second harmonic generation paper, early mode-locking papers done with HeNE laser.

Mark: Maybe something vaguely relevant?

Nate: It's amusing that it's possible.

Patrick: Amusing is good.

Nche; International speakers?

Mark: Expensive. Probably stick with speakers closer to home (America).

Surbi: Next year's ACS is in New Orleans, which is close to Houston. Might be a good way to get a speaker on the cheap. Bring someone up afterwards.

Nate: Might want to bring in industrial speakers instead of just the traditional academic people. 

Surbi: SPIE is geared toward industry.

Lissett: Siemens might be good.

Nate: We need to find out which companies in Houston are doing optics-related stuff.

Ying: May have brochure on local optics companies.

Surbi: Med center may have people doing optics-research.

Nate: Getting interesting professors NOT from Rice may be better than getting interesting professors from Rice.

Nate: What day is good for regular meetings?

Lissett: Lab meeting at lunch on Tuesday.

Mark: Everyone seems to like Thursday lunch.

Patrick: All other days had objections, except Wednesday wasn't mentioned.

Nate; Wednesday is our group meeting.

Surbi: Friday afternoon is ECE pizza lunch.

Surbi: Check with Julia about conference rooms. Duncan is hard to get.

Nate: Check Abercrombie conference room on the ChemE side.

Nate: Foodwise, is pizza good, or is there something else people would prefer?

Mark: Start with pizza. If complains or suggestions, switch to something else. Hungry's?

Surbi: Joe Cole is a bartender at Valhalla, or was.

Nate: Do we need a bank account?

Mark: Yes. Nche needs to check on this. 

Surbi: Hard to get people to show up without pizza. Maybe start meetings after we get money.

Lissett: Can y'all do something with SEEK (Student Engineers Educating Kids)? They do interactive science, talk about nanotechnology, make liquid nitrogen ice cream. Will have group of schools that they'll be working with, which should make joint outreach efforts easier.

Action Items

• Nche - Check on how to get bank account. Contact GSA & ask how to get funding.
• John - Check on printing, send out email soliciting designs
• Mark - Check on conference rooms. 
• Mark - Set up mailing list with Rice IT
• Nate - Send email soliciting ideas for external speakers.
• Lissett - Get in contact with us when SEEK is doing an outreach event.