SPIE co-sponsors ICTP Winter College on nano-optics and plasmonics

Bellingham, WA--Nano-optics and plasmonics, with applications in solar energy, lasers, and research, occupied students and faculty from 40 countries at the 2012 Winter College on Optics at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP; Trieste, Italy). SPIE is among eight organizations that co-sponsor the annual event and other ICTP programs to meet the needs of students and scientists in developing countries.

Held February 6–17, the Winter College was attended by 113 students from 40 countries, and instructed by 17 faculty from 9 countries. Directors were SPIE Fellow Zohra Ben-Lakhdar (University of Tunis), Mario Bertolotti (University of Rome), and Nikolay Zheludev (University of Southampton).

New to the program this year were hands-on experiments provided by Angela Guzman (CREOL, the College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida) and SPIE Fellow Anna Consortini (University of Firenze).

SPIE provided participants with free access to the SPIE Digital Library during the Winter College.

SPIE Immediate Past President Katarina Svanberg (University Hospital Lund) presented SPIE Best Poster Awards for presentations in the Laser, Atomic and Molecular Physics (LAMP) program to:

• First place: Alberto Scarpettini (Universidad de Buenos Aires) for “High resolution imaging using plasmonic probes”

• First place: Vivi Fauzia (Universitas Indonesia and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) for “Enhancing photocurrent on organic solar cells by gold nanospheres”

• Second place: Jasna Dasović (Ruđer Bošković Institute) for “Time-resolved and time-integrated photoluminescence analysis of Si nanoparticles.”

The 2012 ICO/ICTP Gallieno Denardo Prize was awarded to Selçuk Aktürk of the Istanbul Technical University, who made a presentation on his work in ultrashort optical pulses and nonlinear optics.

In addition to the annual Optics Winter College, SPIE provides $30,000 annually to support an optics staff position at ICTP. In conjunction with ICTP, SPIE provides free SPIE Digital Library access in participating countries through the eJDS program, and helps fund a laboratory pursuing novel research in spectroscopy with quantum cascade lasers (QCLs), available to participants from developing nations. The lab is housed at the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nuclear (INFN) and run in collaboration with the Institute for Nanoelectronics, Technische Universität München.

Along with Svanberg, SPIE Past President María Yzuel (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona) represented SPIE at a meeting of the Trieste System Optical Sciences and Applications (TSOSA) Advisory Group, which advises on the coordination of ICTP activities in optics and photonics.

-----

Follow us on Twitter

Follow OptoIQ on your iPhone; download the free app here.

Subscribe now to Laser Focus World magazine; it's free!