Advice for students interested in optics and photonics

I mean this this this is a field that is just set to expand enormously over the next 10 years next 20 years next 30 Years throughout this Century I mean it's just think of the applications in which lasers and photonics are being used already and you look at the rate of growth and penetration into different fields of Science and different areas of society and that's an incredibly steep curve that is only set to continue to increase so if somebody wanted to work on a technology that underpins many of the uh applications that will transform our society over the next few decades this is the field to be in you know high power lasers photonics use of advanced Optics and so forth I've have I've have no doubt it will continue to transform Communications continue to transform high-speed Computing I hope and believe that it will transform our U search for abundant clean energy I think there's a good chance that it will transform many of the medical and uh pharmaceutical applications uh you know that the the list is endless this is a great field to be in well my first bit of advice for young people getting into the field is get into the field uh things happen because you are passionate about making them happen the uh this particular field is such a Melting Pot you can come at it from physics and Mathematics you can come at it from biological scientists uh point of view you can you can start from almost anywhere and find that your expertise is applicable and at the same time you have a whole lot of else of other Specialties to learn about so for example uh my own history as a young man I got interested in in helping children with birth defects uh when I was a biologist and I became more and more and more of a physicist along the way and now I'm not sure what I am but that's okay you know so I guess my advice to young people in biomedical Optics is don't worry about so much where you're from uh get passionate work with people who are different than you are because in the long run the effectiveness in this field has to do with your broader understanding pick the things you find most interesting that's what you likely to do best the things that you find interesting and then you know work intensively and have a great time work intensively find out new things is an exciting business the the thing that keeps me going uh is physics is fun and uh so that's my advice to young people uh get into a field that where you have fun uh that CH it challenges you and physics and astronomy are fun and uh this particular aspect of it is a lot of fun we have uh gosh now over 300 people that have signed on uh to our science collaborations and most of them are young very young uh they just uh postdocs and graduate students and uh that's the future of of this field actually the future of any field and so yeah the advice is physics is fun and uh I my advice is to pursue a a degree in physics or some related field not necessarily astronomy because if you get a degree in physics uh you can do anything you can go into Optical engineering you can go into any kind of uh medical physics astronomy cosmology whatever it takes a lot of practice it's like it's like a piano you have to play you have to get in there and actually do it and you're not going to learn it right away but you just got to keep trying and uh and the thing about this field is that it does actually work so you get a lot of that positive re positive reinforcement you do something and it doesn't work the first time you do it again and it works you get a little a little positive kick from that and then you do the next thing so take it in Little Steps and just just know that it's going to take time to build up that repertoire of experience to when you feel like you have expertise but it will come and so perseverance and continued practice so not just sitting at your desk thinking about stuff but actually getting into the lab and doing something is very very important my personal experience has been that to be a good scientist you have to master mathematics it's really important to be comfortable with a lot of mathematics um and it's really important in astronomy to be very knowledgeable about physics phys astronomy is a branch of physics it's an application of physics and so if you want to be a good astronomer you want to know you want to understand the physical basis of what's going on so you want a strong physics background so if you're a young person in school I would say pursue all the mathematics you can take all the physics classes you can and then later on when you go to graduate school if you really want to be a professional astronomer then you take all your astronomy classes and learn your subfield very very well anybody who's starting out from um undergraduate level to graduate school um it's always a big shock uh to go into the graduate environment because it's so different from the undergraduate environment and real world research um is extremely challenging because the questions are pretty much open-ended you're dealing with with um issues that involve I don't know reality so difficulties of experimental uh uh apparatus or collaborators or or um interpersonal relations things of this sort and I think that um this this uh it's important to be aware of uh all of these things to try to adapt to this environment um and and to learn as much as possible and don't be discouraged uh by uh the complex it of things because this is some it's both a challenge and an opportunity um and I think in particular uh if if we think about um biomedical uh aspects then uh the advice that I would give somebody is to try to understand really um what the the clinical perspective is on problems or perspectives other than an engineering perspective uh because we tend to sometimes be isolated in engineering department it's important really to to um have contact uh with uh collaborators so and and with with clinical situations so that you can understand what uh the issues are in in another uh environment aside from the one that we're most familiar with well I think in terms of you know what's hot right now the whole uh bio uh engineering business is just incredibly hot with enhancements in computer speed the ability to do basically experiments on the computer for chemistry having that affects biology new drug formulation and everything is hot uh biof photonics is going to be a hot area Okay areas involving opto electronic platforms of all kinds integrated opto electronic chips you know are going to be fertile both for information more comp processing speed artificial intelligence coupled with the revolution I think what you're what people are going to see is a blending of Technologies rather than saying you know I'm a laser scientist and I'm a biologist you're going to see uh a you know a gallam Offrey of high Technologies coming together where you know the real winners are going to have a broad base of tech uh technology and physics uh and chemistry um training and be able to synthesize uh these fields and put them together in something uh that's really rather remarkable and probably something we can't even imagine today realize that technology is important in developing it and we have these fabulous Eureka moments and we love it but it's the people who surround it also matter a lot and so make sure to you know remember that and be good to people as you're going through your career and I think you'll have you'll definitely have a happy career you may not have the best career you could possibly have but but you know uh it's the um it's got to be fun along the way to be happy long term yeah I think my my advice for people getting into the field would be uh you know sort of general advice for anybody um coming out of of out of U out of school and that is to find great mentors to work with um I think that that business is an apprenticeship and that you learn by doing and you learn by working with great people um and I think there's a tendency to spend too much time thinking about what exact market and what exact technology would be the best fit when at the end of the day I think the most important thing is to find the right team to work with and the right mentors to work with um and again in lasers you need to have an understanding of both the technology and the markets I think to be successful so it's important to find a team that that really embodies both those Dimensions most important thing about whether you call it research whether you call it development whether you call it product if you don't have passion for what you're doing no amount of intelligence will make up for it

Channel: SPIETV

Views: 81,394

Keywords: Advice For Students, Optics, Photonics, SPIE, Lasers, Bio Photonics, Astronomy, Fusion, Energy, University, College, Math, Physics, environment, educational

Id: 0pZ_m2xV60E

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2010