Student success Celebrating the achievements of ORC students
ORC student awarded Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship Amol is a third year PhD student in the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton (UK) working on the development of multi-GHz modelocked waveguide lasers for applications in optical frequency metrology and biophotonics. In 2008, he received an Erasmus Mundus scholarship to pursue MSc in Photonics from Gent University and Vrije University in Belgium and University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He completed his B.Eng in Electronics and Communications from the Delhi College of Engineering, University of Delhi, India where he was also the president of the SPIE student chapter in 2007.
ORC student, Amol Choudhary, has been awarded a 2013 Scholarship by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics for his potential contributions to the field of optics, photonics, or related field.
“This SPIE scholarship is a great honour and will be beneficial for my current research at the Optoelectronics Research Centre” says Amol. Amol is one of 139 outstanding individuals awarded a total of $351,000 in scholarships this year. Each scholarship is awarded based on its potential contribution to optics and
Young Scientist award for ORC research fellow ORC post-doctoral research fellow Limin Xiao has been recognised for his outstanding research with an international award.
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Light Times | issue 1 2014
photonics, or a related discipline. Professor David Shepherd, Director of Physical Sciences and Engineering’s Graduate School, adds: “I am very pleased to see Amol’s hard work and undoubted potential recognised in this way and I’m sure that this award will be of great benefit to his future research career.” Award-winning applicants were evaluated, selected and approved by the SPIE Scholarship Committee, chaired by SPIE volunteer Kevin Leonard. To date SPIE has distributed over $3.5 million dollars in individual scholarships. This ambitious effort reflects the Society’s commitment to education and to the next generation of optical scientists and engineers around the world. SPIE scholarships are open to full- and part-time students studying anywhere in the world. All scholarship applications are judged on their own merit based on the experience and education level of the individual student.
Limin received the Young Scientist Award at the 3rd International Conference on Optofluidics 2013, in Hong Kong, for his invited presentation Optofluidics in Photonics Crystal Fibres. The award is sponsored by scientific publisher Springer and online scientific community Labon-a-Chip. Limin’s supervisor Dr Anna Peacock said: “The simplicity and flexibility of the all-fibre microcells that Limin has developed will open up new explorations in nonlinear optofluidic interactions. I am thrilled to see his hard work being rewarded and we hope to see continued success in this emerging research area.” Limin’s work builds on the ORC’s long successful history in fibre optics. He said: “The first successful optofluidic optical fibre experiment was carried out by ORC Director Professor Sir David Payne at Southampton in 1972. We hope our work will continue to make the ORC a pioneer in optofluidic fibre optics.”