RIT celebrates Optical Society’s 100th anniversary

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Don Figer, director of RIT’s Future Photon Initiative

Rochester Institute of Technology will have a strong presence at the centennial anniversary meeting of the Optical Society (OSA), an international organization with roots in Rochester. Frontiers in Optics: The 100th OSA Annual Meeting and Exhibit/Laser Science XXXII, will take place Oct. 17-21 in Rochester.

RIT participation includes a technical exhibit by the Future Photon Initiative—an RIT signature research area, the RIT-led “Global Women of Light” symposium and several presentations by RIT faculty, students and alumni.

The Future Photon Initiative will have a technical exhibit promoting the university’s presence in optics and photonics. The RIT initiative centralizes the university’s related research to advance new photonic devices such as detectors, integrated silicon photonics and solar cells.

“The Future Photon Initiative is the face of photonics for RIT,” said Don Figer, director of the initiative and RIT’s Center for Detectors. “The initiative will apply and commercialize the efforts of RIT research groups that develop technology for the generation, transmission, manipulation, absorption and detection of photons.”

The symposium, “Global Women of Light,” is a collaboration between Jie Qiao, associate professor in RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, and the OSA Foundation. Qiao, founder and chair of WiSTEE Connect (Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Entrepreneurship), an international network of female leaders.

Several RIT scientists will present their research at the conference. A sample of RIT researchers includes:

• Grover Swartzlander, associate professor in RIT’s Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Optical Society of America B, will present “An Orbiting Laserport for Low-mass Sailcraft Propulsion.”
• Recent alumna Alexandra Artusio-Glimpse, who earned her Ph.D. this year from RIT’s Center for Imaging Science, will present “Optical Energy Transfer from Relative Motion,” with Swartzlander and graduate student Jacob Wirth.
• Stefan Preble, associate professor of microsystems engineering and electrical and microelectronic engineering in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering, is chair of the Frontiers in Optics Integrated Photonics subcommittee and will give the invited talk, “Quantum Silicon Photonics: Photon sources and Circuits.”
• Students in Preble’s Integrated Photonics Group—Zihao Wang, Michael Fanto, Jeffrey Steidle, Kaifeng Shi and Peichuan Yin—will present on quantum dot lasers, photon sources for quantum computing and communication, nanoscale electro-optic modulators and efficient fiber-chip coupling using plasmons.
• Saif Al Graiti, a student in the engineering Ph.D. program in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering and a graduate of the telecommunications engineering technology master’s program, will present “Leveraging Birefringence and Gain Anisotropy in a Nonlinear Fabry-Perot Resonator to Achieve a High-Contrast Optical and Gate,” a paper co-authored with adviser Drew Maywar, associate professor of electrical, computer and telecommunications engineering technology in RIT’s College of Applied Science and Technology.
• Wenchao Ge, postdoctorate research fellow in RIT’s School of Physics and Astronomy, will present a poster on “Feedback-induced Bistability of an Optically Levitated Nanoparticle: A Fokker-Planck Treatment.” His co-authors are Brandon Rodenburg, postdoctoral fellow, and Mishkat Bhattacharya, assistant professor of physics and head of RIT’s Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics Theory Group.
• Wyatt Wetzel, a physics major in Bhattacharya’s research group, will present a poster on “Multistability in Torsional Optomechanics” during the Symposium on Undergraduate Research at the OSA conference.