Student Spotlight Magazine ORC

Issue 4 | December 2010

Student Spotlight

Shining a light in to life as an ORC student.

Providing light and education in India | page 4

ORC UK Scholarship Award 2010 announced | page 6

Celebrating success: Graduation 2010 | page 7

The Optoelectronics Research Centre magazine for prospective students

2 Student Spotlight | December 2010

WelcomeWelcome to the fourth edition of our magazine for prospective students!

In this edition we have included some student success stories, an update on the recent activities of our OSA student chapter along with student, recent graduate and alumni profiles to give you a feel of what it’s like to study at the ORC and what you can do once you graduate.

Our world-leading research teams are shaping the future, working with a wide range of industries to develop new technologies for communications, healthcare, transport, energy and the environment.

We are looking for the photonics pioneers of the future to join our vibrant research community. UK students will receive enhanced funding including: paid tuition fees, tax-free bursary up to £18k.

For further information about the Optoelectronics Research Centre and our PhD programme or to register for our next open afternoon please visit:

www.orc.southampton.ac.uk/photonics_phd.html or email the admissions team: [email protected]

Sarah Noble, ORC Marketing Officer

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1 Providing light and education in India Students teach underprivileged areas of India about the science of light and tackle some of society’s big issues. Page 4

2 ORC UK Scholarship Award 2010 announced The winner of this year’s award speaks about their success. Page 6

3 Celebrating success: Graduation 2010 See our 10 graduates celebrating their success. Page 7

4 Student profiles Shining a light on the life as a student in the ORC, Sumiaty Ambran speaks about her experience so far. Page 10

5 Graduate profile 2010 graduate, Dr Chris Holmes speaks about his student experience and his research career. Page 10

Students from the ORC are helping to educate underprivileged communities in India about the science of light through an outreach project called SimpliPhy.

The outreach project was set up by final year PhD student, Nikita Daga. Nikita and fellow students Mridu Kalita and Mohammed Belal are taking SimpliPhy, a roadshow of hands-on optics and laser activities, to schools and disadvantaged communities in central and northern India.

“We have already visited four schools, one in a city, two in villages and one linked to an orphanage,” says Nikita. “The response from students and teachers has been fantastic, and we are looking forward to extending the programme to more areas in November and December.”

Nikita, from Nagpur, central India, set up SimpliPhy using the model of the ORC’s award-winning UK outreach programme, the Lightwave Roadshow.

“The aim was to establish a sustainable programme that reaches out to underprivileged and under-represented communities in India,” she says. “So many children have limited access to the wonders of science.”

The team is building relationships between Indian universities and local schools to create a network of volunteers to continue the project’s work.

Providing light and education in India


As well as educating children and families the team have been handing out LED lamps to replace commonly-used kerosene lamps, helping to lower associated health risks, reduce the carbon footprint and provide an example of how photonics technologies play a key role in making a positive difference.

They are also hoping to highlight that science can bridge social divides. The team represents Hindus and Muslims working together sharing an enthusiasm for optics education and outreach, and as a female scientist Nikita acts as a role model for girls aspiring to a career in science.

Nikita adds: “It was through an outreach activity that I was motivated to pursue a career in physics and I am happy to have this opportunity to give back and hopefully motivate others.”

The project has been funded with more than US$8,000 from Laserfest, a year-long celebration of the laser in its 50th anniversary year, which is sponsored by the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America (OSA). An additional £500 was donated by the OSA student chapter at Southampton.

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The SimpliPhy team

Student Spotlight | December 2010

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Student success ORC UK Scholarship Award 2010 announced

First year PhD student, Vassili Savinov, was recently awarded the ORC UK Scholarship Award 2010. The scholarship, which is awarded annually to our top UK applicant, includes paid tuition fees and a tax-free bursary of £18,000.

The scholarship prize was presented to Vassili by ORC Director, Professor David Payne, at the ORC student welcome party, which is held annually at the end of the induction week.

On receiving the award Vassili commented: “I am grateful for the prize and the trust that comes with it. Here, at the ORC, I am surrounded by very gifted and determined people who are passionate about optics and metamaterials. I shall make the best out of the opportunities this great institution provides me to excel.”

Vassili is currently working with the Nanophotonics and Metamaterials group under the supervision of ORC Deputy Director, Professor Nikolay Zheludev.

Professor David Payne

congratulates the 2010

Scholarship winner,

Vassili Savinov

Sam Berry was presented with the prize for the best second year talk at the end of the last academic year.

Annually ORC second year students get the opportunity to practice their presentation skills in front of their peers. The students have to give a presentation about something unrelated to their research, the talks

are graded by the audience and the student with the most marks wins.

Sam won this year’s prize for his talk entitled “Autofocussing” he spoke about how popular imaging devices automatically focus on their subjects.

Sam received a £500 prize which he can put towards the expenses of a conference or summer school.

Second year talk prize awarded to Sam Berry

ORC graduate awarded prize for thesis by IOPThe Institute of Physics (IOP) has awarded ORC graduate, Dr Nikitas Papasimakis, their Quantum Electronics and Photonics PhD Thesis Prize for his thesis entitled “Trapped-modes, slow light and collective resonances in metamaterials.”

This year’s prize has been awarded jointly to Nikitas and another PhD graduate; they will each receive £125.

Prior to receiving this prize Nikitas’ thesis had been widely publicised through 40 publications including a paper in Nature Photonics, 4 Physical Review Letters and 12 conference papers linked to invited and keynote talks.

He was awarded an EPSRC PhD Plus award in 2009 and has recently

been appointed as the Leverhulme Advanced Research Fellow associated with the EPSRC Centre for Photonic Metamaterials based at the ORC.

On receiving the prize Nikitas commented “I am very honoured to jointly receive the thesis award from the Institute of Physics and I would like to take the opportunity to thank Professor Nikolay Zheludev and Dr Vassili Fedotov for their guidance during my PhD.”


Dr Nikitas Papasimakis at work in the anechoic chamber with Dr Vassili Fedotov

First year PhD student, Chaotan Sima, was awarded a prize for his poster at the recent Photon 10 conference held in Southampton.

Chaotan’s poster entitled ‘Realisation of photonic Hilbert transformer with a simple planar Bragg grating’ was highly commended by the Optics and Photonics Division at the conference.

He received a certificate and a cheque for £25 from the Institute of Physics.

Chotan comments: “This prize was a surprise and inspiration for me. The work reported was based on the results I’ve got in the past few months, as a part of my PhD project in the ORC. It is indisputable that I can’t make it on my own; my supervisors and colleagues have offered me great help since my first day here. With this confirmation, I’ll continue to work in the right direction.”

PhD student wins prize at UK’s largest photonics conference

Celebrating success: Graduation 201010 ORC graduands took to the platform at this year’s Graduation Ceremony, led by Dame Valerie Strachan in the Turner Sims Concert Hall.

Over half of those graduating this year faced the trauma of losing their research and facilities in the Mountbatten fire of 2005, against all the odds and with much determination they all managed to get back on track to complete their studies.

Congratulations to: Daniel Friedrich, Chris Holmes, Ping Hua, Huw Major, Ben Mills, Trina Ng, Eric Plum, Alex Schwanecke, Everardo Vargas-Rodríguez and Natasha Vukovic.

Two students receive PhD Plus awardsORC students Richard Parker and Charlie Ying have both been awarded EPSRC PhD Plus awards to continue their research at Southampton once they complete their PhD.

Richard’s project will focus on developing novel sensors for detecting heavy metals and other pollutants released into the environment.

Richard comments: “Being awarded the PhD Plus has enabled me to continue to develop the research undertaken during my PhD studies and bring it towards a satisfying conclusion. Through this funding I will be able to take control of my own research, developing the project towards my own goals. This will act as a good foundation towards a future academic career in materials chemistry and photonics.”

Charlie completed his PhD in record time submitting his thesis within three years.

Charlie comments: “The PhD Plus provides a unique opportunity to take advantage of the methods that were developed in my PhD to engineer and then exploit a single crystal ferroelectric host as an active optical micro-component with low optical loss for optical telecommunications and sensing in particular. My end goal is to stay within the photonics community, in either an academic or spin-out venture capacity, and I think that this opportunity is the ideal vehicle for this.”

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2010 graduates celebrating their success


A historic tour of Southampton – and its pubs!The OSA committee organise a number of social and educational activities throughout the academic year. One of their latest socials included a historic tour of Southampton followed by a tour of some of the city’s oldest pubs.

Dr James Gates led the tour which started near the docks and included a loop of the old city walls.

Other activities this year have included the arctic BBQ, two quizzes, biweekly cake and coffee mornings, film nights and trips to the Winchester fireworks and the Joint European Torus (JET) – Europe’s largest Fusion Device.

The President of the committee, Kate Sloyan, was presented with the excellence award and the $1000 prize for the dedication, hard work and outstanding commitment to the OSA by the Southampton chapter.

Kate comments: “We’re very proud to have won this award for the second year running, particularly as competition was extremely stiff. It’s very satisfying to receive official recognition for all the committee’s hard work, as well as the enthusiasm of our members, and of course $1000 is never unwelcome. We have a fantastic new committee this year who already have some great events planned, and I wish them and the new

president, Helen Rogers, in particular the best of luck in going for the hat trick!”

The OSA excellence awards are presented annually at FiO to two student chapters and two local sections, and are in recognition of their outstanding achievements in advocacy and outreach in their local communities, as well as academic and professional development programming for their members.

This marks the fourth time that the Southampton OSA student chapter has won an excellence award for their work. Previous awards were presented to the committees of 2001, 2007 and 2009.

OSA student chapter newsThe University of Southampton student chapter of the Optical Society of America (OSA) was established by research students at the ORC in 1994, making it the first ever international student chapter.

The OSA student chapter was initiated to help to increase the involvement of research students in the activities of the ORC and to enhance communication of new findings both to internal and external audiences.

The student chapter encourages social activities arranged by the committee that enhance members’ working relationships and provides a break from the hard work of scientific research.

Student chapter win OSA excellence awardThe Southampton OSA student chapter, was awarded an OSA excellence award at the society’s annual Frontiers in Optics (FiO) meeting at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center in Rochester, NY, USA

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2009 OSA Committee celebrate their award


IONS updateThe International OSA Network of Students (IONS) was set up in 2006, to connect young scientists from around the world who are actively engaged in optics and photonics through a range of conferences and events.

The first IONS conference was hosted by the ORC in 2006, the conferences are student-focussed and allow participants to present their latest results to fellow young scientists, discuss their findings and get informed about other cutting-edge research projects.

Lewis Carpenter, Giorgio Adamo and Kate Sloyan, represented the OSA student chapter at IONS 8, held in Moscow, Russia earlier this year.

IONS 8 was hosted by Lomonosov Moscow State and Bauman Moscow State Technical Universities. Over 60 students attended from destinations worldwide,

taking the opportunity to hone their presentation skills in front of their peers – a less daunting environment than a professional conference!

The conference was held over five days, with three days of student research talks, a day of talks from industrial leaders and finally a day to explore the vast sprawling metropolis of Moscow.

IONS 9 will be held in Spain and our very own student chapter will organise and host an IONS conference, for the second time, in Southampton next year!

Students and staff are invited to bring in a dish to represent their country, and everyone gets together for lunch to sample food from around the world.

This year’s international food day was a huge success, with a variety of different

cuisines available for everyone to sample. Diners were spoilt for choice with dishes from countries around the world including: Germany, South Africa, Brazil, Malaysia, Holland and the UK.

International food day – A huge success!Annually the OSA organise an international food day in celebration of the ORC’s international community.

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Raising money for charityThe OSA have organised two coffee mornings so far this year raising over £250 for charity.

Money was raised for the Multiple Sclerosis Society in March and the Macmillan Cancer Support charity in September.

Staff and students donated home-baked goodies ranging from mocha, banana, carrot and fruit cakes to cupcakes and a dutch boterkoek cake.

Following the success of these events the OSA committee are hoping to hold more charity coffee and cake mornings as well as other fundraising activities in the future including a moustache growing competition for prostate cancer.


The 2010 OSA Committee

ORC students sampling flavours from around the world

Multiple Sclerosis cake break

The ORC is a world-leading research centre dedicated to photonics – the study of light. Many of the major developments in today’s technology were pioneered by our researchers, including the optical fibres and amplifiers that power the internet and the fibre laser which is used for a variety of applications ranging from manufacturing to defence.


A laser illuminated fibre reel

Student profile – Sumiaty Ambran Sumiaty is on study leave from an academic position at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia to read for a PhD at the ORC, funded by the Malaysian Government and her employers.

“The ORC was recommended to me by a colleague, I was very impressed with the achievements and the world-class recognition of the ORC and decided to apply.

I am now working on a joint venture between the Silica Fibre group and Engineered Photonics Devices and Applications group. My supervisors are all very supportive and encouraging and the group members are always willing to give me a hand when I need it.

One of the things that impress me most about the ORC is the facilities - I wouldn’t have had the opportunity in other places to use the state-of-the-art facilities that the ORC provides.

There are plenty of opportunities to get your work noticed in the Photonics community, I have already given a poster presentation at the UK’s largest photonics conference, Photon 10 and I will be attending a conference in Singapore later this year.

For me the best thing about being an ORC student is being given the opportunity to work with international scientists who have a wide range of knowledge and attitudes towards learning - I believe working with experts will encourage you to be an expert yourself one day!”

Alumni profile – Oliver GraydonOliver graduated from the ORC in 1996 and joined the Institute of Physics Publishing as a reporter on science and technology magazine, Opto & Laser Europe, where he remained for 10 years eventually becoming editor. Oliver is now editor of Nature Photonics.

“During my PhD I realised that I wasn’t suited to a career as a researcher. As a result, I started thinking about other ways I could use my knowledge of optics and discovered that publishing was the perfect answer for me. It allows me to stay in touch with science and learn about new findings every day without the frustration of having to do it myself.

I joined the Nature Publishing Group in 2006 to launch a new scientific journal called “Nature Photonics”. As editor of this journal, it is my role to oversee the publication of the latest scientific and technological breakthroughs in the field of optics.

Launching the journal and creating what I hope is considered “the place” to publish the most exciting and important research findings in photonics, has been the highlight of my career. Taking the journal from an initial concept through to a reality has been lots of hard work but immensely rewarding.

The knowledge of photonics and the research process I gained through my PhD have been essential for obtaining and conducting my job in scientific publishing.”

2010 Graduate profile – Dr Chris Holmes Dr Christopher Homes completed his PhD in direct UV written planar devices for telecommunication and sensing applications at the ORC in 2009. He is now continuing his research funded by a knowledge transfer secondment from ORC spinout Stratophase.

“My PhD built up on the knowledge I had already learnt from my Physics Masters degree. I was awarded a CASE scholarship by the photonics company Stratophase to work on the commercial development of a biochemical sensor.

The ORC provided opportunities for me to get myself noticed within the Photonics community, through 26 published papers and attendance at 10 international conferences.

Within my role as President of the OSA committee in my second year, I became a founding member of the International OSA Network of Students (IONS) which has now become an internationally recognised network for postgraduate research students. One of my highlights was winning the OSA excellence award for the efforts made in establishing IONS.

On completion of my PhD I was awarded additional funding, through the PhD Plus scheme, to continue my research in integrated optics.

Most recently I have been working on knowledge transfer secondment, developing micromachined integrated optical devices for telecommunication and detection applications.

The best thing about being an ORC graduate is the accolade of having an ORC PhD, as it is highly acclaimed in the Photonics industry worldwide.”

11Student Spotlight | December 2010

www.orc.southampton.ac.uk/photonics_phd.html [email protected] +44 (0)23 8059 3150

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