SPIE is one of the oldest optical societies, which was founded in 1955 for light technologies development. It unites about 264 000 members from 166 countries. The society develops and popularizes network technologies, initiates research and increases the amount of scientific papers in this field. Also it promotes education, career and professional development of its members. SPIE organizes and sponsors about 25 major technical forums, exhibitions and educational programs in North America, in Europe, in Asia and Australia.
It is noteworthy that SPIE supports not only skilled scientists who had made the contribution to optics, photonics and allied sciences but also it looks ahead. Thus it is accessible to all students belonging to different age groups. SPIE organizes conferences and grants competitions. The SPIE Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship is a grant for bachelor, master and PhD students who make important optics and photonics research. It means that students writing the grant proposal have to describe the influence of their study on the future of optical sciences. The participants get from two to eleven thousand dollars for their research, book publication or study.
This year among the grant recipients there are two students from ITMO University. Vladimir Borisov, the Master Student of Department of Photonics and Optical Information Technology, the researcher in terahertz medicine and Maksim Gorlach, PhD Student, research engineer of the International Research Center for Nanophotonics and Materials. The winners told us what led them to this important achievement:
Maksim Gorlach says: «I research strong spatial dispersion effects in metamaterials. Metamaterials are artificial composite structures. Generally a lattice constant of these structures is much less than the wavelength of radiation. Thus this structure behaves like continuous medium so from the point of macroscopic view we can see homogeneous material. Using metamaterials one can get the properties that are not found in nature. Strong spatial dispersive response of the structure belongs to these properties too. Point-oriented polarization of material depends on field results of neighboring regions of space. Thus one can see unusual optical properties. Now the staff of the laboratory and I am working on evolve this research. Its results are represented in some modern scientific papers. I want to mention Pavel Belov, the head of the Metamaterials Laboratory of the ITMO University and Aleksandr Poddubnyi, the research fellow of the International Research Centre for Nanophotonics and Materials who contributed to my research achievement. Now I make theoretical calculation and soon together with my colleagues we will begin the experimental verification of the theoretical conclusions. The results of our research can be useful for development of industrial and medical materials. Also there is another aspect of my analysis. It is the research of topological effects in photonics. It is an upcoming research tendency. We started developing it only recently and we hope that we will obtain unexpected results. Today researchers have to keep an eye on scientific trends because some fields appear while others stop being significant».
Vladimir Borisov: «The research of different mediums using holography is the main line of the laboratory where I work. We research the holograms recorded on different mediums, their physical and optical properties. Using these properties one can evaluate the quality of materials and the processes which occur inside it under the influence of different factors. I research several polymeric mediums and crystals. The applications of mediums used for holography are multiple. Transformation optics is a new branch of science dealing with light. The research of these materials can be useful for this branch. And at the same time it is complicated technological procedure. Last year while working on my bachelor thesis I faced some difficulties that limited my hologram research. Then I decided to design a multipurpose experimental stand which would be used for obtaining exact results. When I learned about SPIE Scholarship I proposed a project and described the operation principle of this stand in order to get funding for it. Now I`m going to design the stand. Then in August I will present the results at the international Conference on Optics and Photonics».
SPIE also offers so-called Travel Grants. It reimburses travel expenses for students who are going to visit scientific conferences and forums. The students of ITMO University win these grants quite often. The members of Optical Student Chapter of ITMO University frequent the winners’ list, too. They co-operate not only with SPIE but also with other large optical societies as OSA and IEEE. Meanwhile the management team of OSC has gained large experience in official registration of the documents for different student grants and they can share this experience. Thus Maksim Gorlach and Vladimir Borisovreplicated the success of their colleagues who became prize winners of prestigious scholarship of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Microwave Theory and Techniques Society.
Ulyana Malysheva
Newsportal office