Creative Teaching Methods

Featured Speakers:

15.30 - 16.00
Outreach Activities in Photonics: Inspiring the Next Generation
Hugo Thienpont, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

16.00 - 16.30
Teaching Quantum Mechanics to Engineers
David A.B. Miller, Stanford University, USA

16.30 - 17.00
Teaching Photonics in Turkey: 1994 - 2009
Alphan Sennaroglu, Kocç University, Turkey

Outreach Activities in Photonics: Inspiring the Next Generation

Hugo Thienpont, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Abstract: In recent years we have been witnessing on a world-wide scale an alarming decrease in the number of students that are pursuing a career in science and engineering. If this trend persists it will soon and inevitably result in a shortage of highly educated and highly skilled researchers and engineers, which so far have been responsible for product innovation and scientific and technological breakthroughs that support our technology-driven economy and enhance the quality of our daily lives.

One possible route to alleviate this shortage of next generation innovators is to continuously inspire and fascinate the present-day primary and secondary school students with the beauty of science and the opportunities that technology has in store for them to help understanding and contribute to solving some of the top-10 world problems.

In this presentation we will provide a variety of recent successful experiments in outreach activities in the fascinating world of optics and photonics to secondary school students and to their teachers, which we have set up during the last few years and we will share our best practices with the audience.

Biography: Hugo Thienpont (M'99) was born in Ninove, Belgium, in 1961. He graduated as an electrotechnical engineer in 1984 and received the Ph.D. degree in applied sciences in 1990, both at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Brussels, Belgium .

In 1994, he became Professor at the Faculty of Applied Sciences, with teaching responsibilities in photonics. In 2000, he became Research Director of the “Department of Applied Physics and Photonics” at the VUB, and in 2004, he was elected Chair of the department. Currently, he is the coordinator of several basic research and networking projects such as the European Network of Excellence on Micro-Optics (NEMO). In addition to academic oriented research projects, he manages microphotonics related industrial projects with companies like Barco, Agfa-Gevaert, Tyco, and Umicore. He authored more than 150 SCI-stated journal papers and more than 400 publications in international conference proceedings. He edited 15 conference proceedings and authored 7 chapters in books. He was an invited speaker at 45 international conferences and is co-inventor of 13 patents.

Prof. Thienpont was Guest Editor of several special issues on Optical Interconnects for Applied Optics and the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics on Quantum Electronics, and is General Chair of the SPIE Photonics Europe conferences in Strasbourg. In 1999, he received the International Commission for Optics Prize ICO'99 and the Ernst Abbe medal from Carl Zeiss. In 2003, he was awarded the title of “IEEE LEOS Distinguished Lecturer.” He received the SPIE President's Award in 2005 for dedicated service to the European Community and the international MOC Award in 2007. Prof. Thienpont is a fellow member of SPIE and EOS, and a member of OSA and IEEE LEOS.

Teaching Quantum Mechanics to Engineers David A.B.Miller, Stanford University, USA
	Abstract: For anyone working in advanced optics, optoelectronics, electronic devices, materials science or nanotechnology, quantum mechanics is now essential. Without at least a basic knowledge of quantum mechanical ideas, any serious engineering in these areas is impossible; quite advanced understanding is often necessary just to read the relevant literature. Many engineers have had little or no quantum mechanics in their education. Others have taken a physics sequence but feel that they come away with no sense that they understand what is going on or that they have learned little that is useful to them. Fortunately, quantum mechanics can be taught successfully to engineers. If the subject is approached in the right way with the right selection of topics, engineers with a reasonable undergraduate grounding in mathematics and basic physics need have no substantial difficulty with quantum mechanics. The talk will outline how I have approached teaching quantum mechanics to engineers so that they can both understand it and use it in their own work.
Biography: David A. B. Miller received his B.Sc. from St Andrews University and, in 1979, the Ph.D. from Heriot-Watt University, both in Physics. He was with Bell Laboratories from 1981 to 1996, as a department head from 1987, latterly of the Advanced Photonics Research Department. He is currently the W. M. Keck Professor of Electrical Engineering, the Director of the Solid State and Photonics Laboratory, and a Co-Director of the Stanford Photonics Research Center at Stanford University. His research interests include physics and devices in nanophotonics, nanometallics, and quantum-well optoelectronics, and fundamentals and applications of optics in information sensing, switching, and processing. He has published more than 220 scientific papers, holds 68 patents, has received numerous awards, is a Fellow of OSA, IEEE, APS, and the Royal Societies of Edinburgh and London, holds two honorary degrees, and is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Quantum Mechanics for Scientists and Engineers (Cambridge, 2008), and regularly teaches quantum mechanics to engineers at Stanford.

Teaching Photonics in Turkey: 1994 - 2009
Alphan Sennaroglu, Koç University, Turkey

Abstract: Photonics has been among the fastest growing academic disciplines in leading Turkish universities since early 1990s. Currently, active research areas span a wide spectrum, including but not limited to photonic crystals, mid-infrared solid-state lasers, detectors, femtosecond fiber lasers, uv/white LEDs, plasmonics, optical modulators, MEMs, micro-nano photonics, nonlinear optics, quantum optics, optical metrology, and spectro-scopy. The fast growth in this are is largely due to the establishment of strong educational programs in Photonics. The presentation will provide a review of activities aimed at teaching Photonics over the last fifteen years both at the undergraduate and graduate level in different Turkish universities. Examples of course syllabi, classroom demonstrations, outreach activities, and local workshop/conference organization will be discussed.

Biography: Alphan Sennaroglu is a Professor in the Departments of Physics and Electrical-Electronics Engineering at Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey . He received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1988, 1990, and 1994, respectively. He founded the Koç University Laser Research Laboratory in 1994 and has led the research activities of this laboratory since then. Alphan Sennaroglu's research interests include solid-state lasers, ultrafast/femtosecond optics, photonic applications and spectroscopy of nano particles, spectroscopy of novel laser and amplifier media, and nonlinear optics. He edited three books on Solid-State Lasers. He was a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during the 2002-2003 academic year and in the summers of 2005-2008. In 2004 and 2006, he served as the program chair of the Solid-State Lasers and Amplifiers Conference during the Photonics Europe meeting which took place in Strasbourg, France. He has also served as a member of the Technical Program Committees for CLEO-America: Ultrafast Optics (2005-2007), CLEO-Europe Ultrafast Optics (2005, 2009), Photonics Europe-Solid-State Lasers (2004, 2006, and 2008), and ASSP-Advanced Solid-State Photonics (2008-2009).

In December 2005, Alphan Sennaroglu was elected as associate member to the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA). He is a Senior Member of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and a member of OSA (Optical Society of America), SPIE (The International Society for Optical Engineering), Optics Committee of Turkey, Tau Beta Pi, and Eta Kappa Nu. In 1999, he founded the Leos Turkish Chapter of the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society and served as the Chapter President between 1999 and 2003. He received the 2002 ICTP/ICO Award (ICTP: International Center for Theoretical Physics, ICO: International Commission for Optics), 2001 Werner-von-Siemens Award (Koç University), 2001 TUBA Young Scientist Award, 1998 Tubitak (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) Young Scientist Award, Sage Graduate Fellowship (Cornell University, 1989-1990), Sibley Prize of Electrical Engineering (Cornell University, 1988), and Amideast undergraduate scholarship (1984-1988).

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