IEEE LEOS TURKEY CHAPTER
In July 1998, the IEEE LEOS president Dr. J. Gary Eden invited the LEOS Turkish members to form a Chapter in Turkey. After a year of membership recruitment, the IEEE LEOS Turkey Chapter was officially approved in November 1999. Since then the chapter has organized numerous technical activities to foster the development of optics research in Turkey. In particular, workshops on Electro-Optics (Fig. 1) have been organized annually since 1999 in order to facilitate the exchange of ideas among Turkish researchers and engineers working in the field of optics. IEEE LEOS Turkey Chapter took an active part as a cosponsor of these events by providing support for publicity, and travel money for student participants. The number of attendees of the Electro-Optics workshops has been steadily increasing. In addition, IEEE LEOS Turkey Chapter held numerous technical seminars in Istanbul and Ankara. Distinguished speakers of IEEE LEOS were also hosted to give talks during these events (Fig. 2). Recently, our chapter was awarded the 2001 largest membership increase prize which was shared with the Ukraine Chapter.

Figure 1: Attendees of the Second Turkish Workshop on Electro-Optics. October 20, 2000, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Figure 2: Hugo Thienpont, a LEOS distinguished speaker, giving a lecture at the IEEE LEOS Turkey Chapter. (May 2002)

In 2002, several new types of activities besides technical seminars and workshops were started. In particular, two short courses were organized in January and May 2002 on high-speed photodetectors and ultra-resolution optical microscopy. These were delivered by Prof. Selim Unlu from Boston University. Second, an industrial training program was initiated to give educational seminars or short courses to companies or research institutes about current topics of importance in photonics. Volunteer chapter members will be responsible for contacting the companies and organizing these seminars. The first one, an educational seminar about mode locking of lasers, was delivered by Alphan Sennaroglu at the National Metrology Institute in Gebze, Turkey in January 2002.

Figure 3: Laser Voice transmitter built by the IEEE LEOS Turkey Chapter in Spring 2002. (Umit Demirbas appearing in the picture is an IEEE LEOS student member)

Finally, the IEEE LEOS Turkey chapter has been actively involved in recruiting new student members to IEEE LEOS. Students from various Turkish universities became IEEE LEOS members in 2002. In order to increase undergraduate students’ familiarity with state-of-the-art optical technologies, our chapter has also been involved in the preparation of optics demonstrations. As an example, a laser voice transmitter (Fig. 3), was built between January and June 2002. Recently recruited LEOS student members were actively involved in the design and construction.

For more information about the IEEE LEOS Turkey Chapter, visit our web page at http://home.ku.edu.tr/~ieee-leos/

Alphan Sennaroglu
IEEE LEOS Turkey Chapter

IEEE LEOS German Chapter
The LEOS German Chapter was founded in 1997 with a membership of 160. The first elections took place in 1998 and Professor Dieter Jäger (Duisburg) and Professor Freude (Karlsruhe) have been elected as chair and cochair, respectively, and approved again in 2001 for the second term. As first activities of the Chapter it was agreed to increase the membership and to appear in public by sponsoring different conferences as well as to set up networks between industry, research institutes and universities.

Regular Activities
Since 1998 the German Chapter was frequently and regularly engaged in cosponsorship of different conferences, such as “IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics”, “Optics in Computing”, “Microoptics 2000”, “European Conference on Integrated Optics”, “International Conference on Terahertz Electronics” and “Microcavity Light Sources” or “Microwaves and Optronics”. Additionally, several Seminars and Colloquia have been organized, for example, an evening lecture on “Photonics – Key Technology of the 21st Century” which has been attended by about 200 students and the public.

In 2000 we started to provide an information channel for the members composing an annual e-Newsletter. This newsletter is intended to feature the different activities of the Chapter and to highlight also technical innovations relevant to LEOS fields. Recent reports addressed, for example, the topics microwave photonics with emphasis on fiber radio communications, optoelectronic antenna arrays for wireless access and recent achievements in microoptics. The Chapter is currently going to set up a web site.

The activities of the Chapter have further been presented at different fairs and exhibitions, in particular at LASER 2001 in Munich, the Hannover Fair 2002, the OPTATEC 2002 in Frankfurt, and MEDICA 2002 in Düsseldorf. On a much smaller scale but also very important, the Chapter has been organizing technical and educational seminars in cooperation with companies, such as Agilent, Keithley and Hewlett-Packard.

Competence Centers in Optics and Optoelectronics
The German Chapter has recently been active in establishing a close cooperation between science and industry. Several workshops, seminars and round table platforms have been organized in order to foster the discussion and interaction between Universities and companies. Several questionnaires have been circulated and are being evaluated at this time. In parallel, a national program aiming at the promotion of so-called “Competence Centers for Optical Technologies” has been initiated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science in Germany and, as a result, eight centers have been formed up to now, several of them under the leadership of LEOS members. In consequence of these activities, a science center on optoelectronics, called “WiNO”, and the network “OpTech-Net” have been formed in the State of Northrhine Westfalia working closely together with the LEOS German Chapter.

European and International Activities
The German Chapter has particularly been engaged in forming cooperations with other countries. We have cosponsored bi-tateral symposia between China and Germany on “Opto- and Microelectronic Devices and Circuits” (SODC) in Nanjing in 2000 and Stuttgart 2002. A corresponding joint research program has recently been established. European competence centers are also being promoted in order to pave the way for international cooperations. In September the German Chapter has taken part in the organization of a international workshop on “Optics-Microwave Interactions” and a European Workshop on “High-Frequency Optical Signal Generation and Processing for Future Broadband Fiber Radio Systems”.

Education and Students
The number of students in electrical engineering has dropped dramatically during the years from 1993 to about 2000. It is, however, gradually increasing now. On the other hand there is a great lack of engineers in the industry, especially in optical and related areas such as optoelectronics and photonics. The German Chapter is involved in the definition of new master courses in optical technologies at Universities and in forming new study programs with emphasis in optoelectronics and photonics. Courses for start-up companies have also been developed.

The Future
The membership of the LEOS German Chapter is permanently increasing and has reached a number of about 260 this summer. In the following years we hope to foster the continued growth of our community and to create an effective infrastructure for education, research and industry. We will further promote close collaborations with and between existing regional, national and international research institutes and companies and we are going to proceed with the formation of relevant networks that will facilitate and encourage the sharing of knowledge and expertise and the enabling of innovations in topic LEOS fields. Another idea we have in mind is to start a workshop on a specific subject which would rotate between different LEOS chapters in Europe, similar to the WFOPC (Workshop on Fiber Optics Passive Components) which was initiated in Italy and is now organized by the Scottish Chapter. We are further looking ahead to joint Workshops, in particular with the MTT and ED German Chapters to arrange meetings on Microwave Photonics and Optoelectronic Devices, respectively.

Photos and contact addresses:

Prof. Dr. Dieter Jäger (Chair)
ZHO-Optoelektronik
Gerhard-Mercator-Universität Duisburg
47048 Duisburg/ Germany
e-mail: D.Jaeger@oe.uni-duisburg.de
www.oe.uni-duisburg.de

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Freude (Vice-Chair)
High-Frequency and Quantum Electronics Laboratory
Universität Karlsruhe
76128 Karlsruhe/Germany
e-mail: W.Freude@etec.uni-karlsruhe.de
www-ihq.uni-karlsruhe.de