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Author: Manuel Jorge Marques

On Saturday, March 14th, several members of the Applied Optics Group and of the OSA student chapter took on the challenge of organising and hosting an outreach event with the support of the School of Physical Sciences at the local city museum, the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge. Titled "Light up your life - ...continue reading "Outreach event at the Beaney museum"
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Our BLOX demonstration kit in action!

On Saturday, March 14th, several members of the Applied Optics Group and of the OSA student chapter took on the challenge of organising and hosting an outreach event with the support of the School of Physical Sciences at the local city museum, the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge.

Titled "Light up your life - Day of Discovery", this event focused on raising awareness of the importance of Optics and Photonics among the general public, especially since this year has been proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Year of Light (IYL). We had about 100-200 people attending throughout the day, mostly families with children, which made it that more challenging as the way the content was presented had to be changed on-the-fly!

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Models of some of the "samples" we image at our Biomedical Imaging lab.

The event couldn't have gone forward without the organisation (and recruiting) from our School's outreach officer, Dr Vicky Mason, to whom we are grateful. She also provided an additional interactive module in the form of a thermal imaging camera (which yielded some interesting thermal "selfies" such as the one below).

A thermal photo of our current chapter president, Manuel Marques. (bluer regions mean lower surface temperatures).
A thermal photo of our current chapter president, Manuel Marques. (bluer regions mean lower surface temperatures).
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Some outreach posters were also exhibited, along with a slideshow depicting photos of our fellow researchers working in the lab (in the picture we have Yong aligning his Ti-Sapphire laser!).

Finally, our thanks to all of our colleagues who kindly volunteered to be there on a Saturday: Prof Adrian Podoleanu, Dr Adrian Bradu, Dr Sylvain Rivet, Christopher Costa, Catherine Chin, Manuel Marques, Michaël Maria and Radu Stancu.

Last Friday, January 30th the OSA Student Chapter hosted a pizza party social event, which took place at the Photonics Centre meeting room. This was a fantastic way to finish a week's intensive course of seminars including invited talks and lectures integrated in the PH800 module curricula. We were also visited by our colleagues currently ...continue reading "Pizza per tutti social!"
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Last Friday, January 30th the OSA Student Chapter hosted a pizza party social event, which took place at the Photonics Centre meeting room. This was a fantastic way to finish a week's intensive course of seminars including invited talks and lectures integrated in the PH800 module curricula.

We were also visited by our colleagues currently in the first half of their Marie Curie PhDs in Denmark, who will eventually be involved in this Chapter at some point.

This was an excellent opportunity for all of us to meet in a more relaxed environment with a lot of lovely pizza ordered locally. Many thanks to everyone for coming!

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On Tuesday 11th November, members of the OSA Student Chapter at Kent gave lab tours to interested undergraduate Physics students from the University of Kent. Students were shown around the Photonics labs and spoke with researchers (both post-doctorate and PhD) about their work within the Applied Optics Group. The undergraduates were able to gain perspective ...continue reading "Photonics lab tours for Physics 2nd-year students"
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On Tuesday 11th November, members of the OSA Student Chapter at Kent gave lab tours to interested undergraduate Physics students from the University of Kent. Students were shown around the Photonics labs and spoke with researchers (both post-doctorate and PhD) about their work within the Applied Optics Group.

The undergraduates were able to gain perspective into the research environment, particularly in optics but also academia as a whole. The visit was also greatly beneficial to the AOG members as it gave an opportunity to relate their work to a less experienced audience.

The chapter would like to give thanks to all AOG members involved, and of course to the undergraduates who expressed enthusiasm for the event. A final acknowledgement goes to Prof. Podoleanu for publicising these tours in his “Electromagnetism & Optics” lectures.

More photos are available here

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