By Howard Lee
If you work in Optics and Photonics, more than likely you have heard about the CLEO US conference. I have been working on Optics and Photonics research for almost 10 years, and have heard from everyone in the community that CLEO is a great peer-reviewed conference. However, because of issues in the past with my visa, I have never been to the CLEO-US conference. This is one of the reasons why I’m very excited about attending CLEO-US this year!
I spent several years in Germany as a graduate student in Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light so I have been to CLEO-Europe twice in 2009 and 2011. The conferences were excellent, and I enjoyed almost everything there, including the short courses, tutorial talks, invited talks, poster sessions, welcome reception and the beer. (yes, German beer is definitely good).
Now I am in US working as a postdoc at California Institute of Technology, and have been invited as a scientific blogger for CLEO-US 2014 in San Jose this year. The first thing I looked up on the CLEO: 2014 official website is the short courses. This is the best place for you to learn something fundamental if you are not very familiar with a particular topic. Scanning through the list of the short courses provided, I find that we have very high-quality speakers lined up this year. As my research focuses are nano-photonics and plasmonics, I am particular interested in the courses of:
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Silicon Photonic Devices and Applications from Michal Lipson (Cornell Univ.)
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Transformational Optics from Ulf Leonhardt (Weizmann Inst. of Science in Israel)
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Plasmonics from Mark Brongersma (Stanford Univ.)
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MetaMaterials from Vladimir M. Shalaev (Purdue Univ.)
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Quantum Cascade Lasers: Science, Technology, Applications and Markets from Federico Capasso (Harvard Univ.)
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Nano Photonics: Physics and Techniques from Axel Scherer (Caltech)
Prof. Brongersma’s lectures are the only ones I’ve ever attended amongst the above. According to my personal experience, I would recommend you to attend his short course if you are interested in learning something on plasmonics. I have taken his short courses twice in CLEO-Europe. Prof. Brongersma always gives an excellent course from the basic knowledge to new and interesting ideas about plasmonics. Of course, I believe all courses will be excellent and the choice is all up to you depending on your preferred topic and research interest!
Other than the short courses, I suggest you also look up the titles of the tutorial and invited talks now and find out the exciting talks which are related to your field. I also look forward to seeing the full program schedules and at that time we can go through more carefully all the interesting contributed talks in different topics and all the events.
Let me know if you find any particularly interesting talks at CLEO this year. I wish I could attend all of them! Luckily, CLEO is recording a significant portion of the CLEO technical program. Full conference registrants can purchase on demand viewing of these talks as an option for only $45 when registering online.
By the way, my name is Howard Lee. I look forward to seeing you at CLEO: 2014 to discuss the science and research interests in photonics. Don’t forget to arrange for registration, hotels, visa etc. in advance, as the US visa application may take 1-2 months depending on the country.
Posted: 24 February 2014 by
Howard Lee
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