Students from the chapter visited the NextCorps facility in downtown Rochester and were given an overview and tour of the Luminate program, which is an international startup accelerator focused on optics, photonics, and imaging, that is spearheaded by NextCorps.
Students from the SPIE Student Chapter provided different optics demonstrations as a part of the Institute of Optics’ annual High School Connection Showcase on Friday (18th October), where high school students visited the Institute to learn more about optics and the department.
As a part of the UR SPIE Chapter’s Invited Speaker series, Peter Winzer from Bell Labs visited the Insitute of Optics on Friday, 18th of October. He had breakfast and lunch with students and faculty, and then gave a talk on that was titled “On Optical Network Capacity Scaling, Publication Hype, and Real-World Research Impact”.
Madilyn Beckman, Associate Project Manager at Circle Optics and a recent graduate from the Institute of Optics and the TEAM program, presented a talk on entrepreneurship and the journey that led her to Circle Optics. She discussed about her experiences working in an exciting start-up, and provided useful insight for individuals wishing to walk down the same path.
Volunteers from the UR SPIE Student Chapter were at the Brighton Farmers’ Market this past Sunday (8th September) for an ‘Ask a Scientist’ session. They had cool optics demos that caught the interest of passersby, who then engaged in informative conversations with our volunteers.
The General Interest Meeting for 2019 was held in Georgen Hall last Friday (6th September), and was attended by old and new graduate and undergrad students. Nick Kochan, president of the Student Chapter, introduced the chapter to the new students, and talked about the different ventures done by chapter in the past, and what we have planned for the next year.
Congratulations to our newly elected officers for the next year!
President: Nick Kochan
Vice President: Nick Takaki
Treasurer: Romita Chaudhuri
Secretary: Katie Dunn
Communications: Ben Moon
Web Admin: Saniat Choudhury
Also thank you to our previous officers for a wonderful year!
On Friday April 12th, our student chapter co-hosted a panel with RIT’s OSA/SPIE chapter that focused on graduate student mental health. The panel consisted of alumni from both schools that are currently working in industry, a student from the University of Rochester who is finishing up their Ph.D. in Optics, and a psychology intern from the University of Rochester’s Counseling Center. The event was well attended and consisted of an open question and answer session, small group discussions, and closed with a mindfulness exercise. Afterward, students were invited to play board games.
On April 6th, members of our student chapter presented optics demos to Girl Scouts at their STEM-A-Palooza event in town. The event was attended by many local troops from the Rochester area.
On March 29th students from our chapter went to the George Eastman House. Included in the trip to the museum was a tour of the technology vault, which is not usually open to the public. In the vault, students saw a vast collection of many different cameras spanning decades of the history of photography.
Become a member of SPIE and join our Student Chapter!
On top of all the benefits you will receive this beautiful long sleeve t-shirt.
