Well, apparently it's time to go home. The conference is over and there's nothing left to do but pack and catch a flight in the morning. It was a good conference for me - I got some work done (but not as much as I wanted); I saw some good talks (but missed a couple I should have gone to); and I got to see my good friends and meet new potential collaborators. All in all, I couldn't ask for much better.
The best part about the conference, at least for me and mine, is that we generally have a Wed. or Thurs. group dinner. Dinner then morphs into a night on a patio drinking and smoking cigars. This year was no exception. After a long dinner at McCormick and Schmick's, most of the group (twelve of us) pulled up some chairs outside and enjoyed one of the great things about academic conferences - sitting with old friends, cracking jokes and reminiscing. My adviser's adviser has a close bond with many of his former students, and that group, along with their students (academic cousins?) are some of my favorite people. We have similar senses of humor, taste in cigars, and a general willingness to have a good time. It's also a group that is very welcoming to the new students that are joining up. My buddy Dom made his first FiO trip this year and I think he was integrated into the group quite well.
I also enjoy Thursdays at the conference because I see a wide assortment of random talks. Mon-Wed. I try to go talks that seem relevant in between trying to work with collaborators on papers. On Thursday, though, I feel obligated to see as many talks as I can just to get my money's worth out of the conference. Some of the talks I end up seeing are clunkers, but some of them are really cool. I just move from room to room with little rhyme or reason. I often walk into a room and then see someone I've met at a student function or just sitting in the lobby giving a talk. Somehow, even though I meet these people at the conference, I guess it doesn't register with me that I might actually see them talk.
I had a great time this year, and I'm looking forward to coming back. I'll have one or two more posts wrapping up ideas from the conference - one to describe my new ideas for how the conference should be run (the sporting event analogy) and maybe a good story or two I've kept out of the blog so far.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Sessions, sessions, sessions
I gave my two talks today. They had varying degrees of success. No one brought me a mustache or tie to change into, so I think the second talk wasn't all it could be. Our session, Coherence and Fundamental Optics (I think) had seven talks. Prof. Boris Zeldovich from CREOL was our presider. I don't know him well, but Prof. Zeldovich is one of my favorite people to see at FiO. He always has interesting questions and he often seems to understand all of the little details that don't make it into the talks. He did a great job keeping everyone on time, and he admonished the crowd for not asking any questions. It was fantastic.
It's always fun to watch the ebb and flow of people in and out of each talk. In principle, one would hope that people would go to a single session and sit through the entire thing. Of course, people want to go to talks in multiple sessions, have other meetings or appointments, or really just want to see one talk. We had pretty entertaining waves of people. A reasonable number of people came to my talks, and none of them were poorly attended (even with lunch coming up), but one talk seemed to have 'rock star' quality to it. Chun-Fang Li from Shanghai University was presenting the experimental observation of a polarization-sensitive refractive effect predicted by Prof. Paul Kwiat of UIUC (my home institution). It seems pretty clear that this talk should have been in a different session, as 20-30 people filed in just for this talk and left afterward.
While I have no problem with people coming in and out all of the time, the rooms we speak in aren't often designed for high throughput during a talk. There is no good choice; either the door is continually opening and closing, or the noise from the exhibition and people walking around becomes distracting. We need a better system - teleportation is at least three years out, so I suggest we make the whole conference more like a sporting event, with announcers, a booming PA system, and more. I'll be laying out these ideas a little more clearly in my post tonight.
It's always fun to watch the ebb and flow of people in and out of each talk. In principle, one would hope that people would go to a single session and sit through the entire thing. Of course, people want to go to talks in multiple sessions, have other meetings or appointments, or really just want to see one talk. We had pretty entertaining waves of people. A reasonable number of people came to my talks, and none of them were poorly attended (even with lunch coming up), but one talk seemed to have 'rock star' quality to it. Chun-Fang Li from Shanghai University was presenting the experimental observation of a polarization-sensitive refractive effect predicted by Prof. Paul Kwiat of UIUC (my home institution). It seems pretty clear that this talk should have been in a different session, as 20-30 people filed in just for this talk and left afterward.
While I have no problem with people coming in and out all of the time, the rooms we speak in aren't often designed for high throughput during a talk. There is no good choice; either the door is continually opening and closing, or the noise from the exhibition and people walking around becomes distracting. We need a better system - teleportation is at least three years out, so I suggest we make the whole conference more like a sporting event, with announcers, a booming PA system, and more. I'll be laying out these ideas a little more clearly in my post tonight.
Tuesday Wrap Up
A few scattered thoughts from yesterday - apologies to all of you that were expecting the Tuesday post on Tuesday
- The reception last night was great - I thought the food was really good, the speakers didn't speak too long, and everyone was having a good time
- John Schotland from U Penn gave a great talk on inverse scattering for the SRS co-located meeting. Full disclosure - John was my advisor's post-doctoral advisor, so he's part of the 'family'. However, I still think he has a pretty cool research program. The talk was on adding a known scatterer near the object being imaged to change the way the data recovered and the object are related.
- We had a good time with a number of students in OSA last night - I don't remember anyone's name, but I think we had 30+ people in our room last night for an 'after hours' party. It was impressive how quickly the hotel shut that down.
- My advisor, Scott, leads a charmed life. He was sitting in a session yesterday and the young woman sitting next to him looked over his shoulder (or something - this is now second hand) and saw that he was reading a paper in her field. She asked Scott which paper he was reading. Scott replied that he was not reading but reviewing/writing a paper. It turns out she is a student doing experimental work in the same field. The two began talking about the research, and I think we now have an experimental collaborator. That kind of thing doesn't happen to most people.
- I got an e-mail from my mom yesterday mocking me for going to California during a rain storm while it was nice and sunny in Illinois.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Live-ish updates from the Plenary Session
Anyone that knows me knows that I need a filter over my mouth and typing fingers. A live blog is a bad idea for me. Delaying the publication time also allows me to toss in a few links. Below are all of the 'acceptable' notes and comments from the plenary session:
Plenary Session Retroactive Live Blog*
10:27
Before we begin, let's introduce our two speakers. First up will be Prof. Andrea M. Ghez from UCLA. The title of her talk is "Unveiling a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy." The second talk is by Prof. Janos Kirz from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He will be giving the talk "X-Ray Microscopy."
10:30
Introductions are being given by co-chair Thomas Carruthers. Prof. Ghez is distinguished and a delightful speaker. Sometimes very impressive people are incredibly dry and boring. She gets major points for having cartoons on most of her introductory slides. I'm hooked.
10:35
Prof. Ghez just shrunk the Earth into the size of a sugar cube. Don't get worried. She also compressed the Sun to the size of a university campus. I think we're fine since they both got scaled by about the same amount.
10:36
Whenever people show off pictures from astronomy and astrophysics, I really feel jealous that I'm not doing something so cool. Astronomers really produce some of the best images in science.
10:38
Prof. Ghez just referred to super-massive black holes as 'prima donnas'. I'm glad that everyone anthropomorphizes (?) their research.
10:46
Prof. Ghez shines laser light into the atmosphere to 'fake' a star for their adaptive optics. That's awesome. Really, she's stimulating strong emissions in the atmosphere that are approximately as bright as 'bright' stars are. This provides a guide for the manner in which the atmosphere distorts the field she and collaborators are trying to observe.
10:50
Prof. Ghez just showed a diagram of the solar system. It included Pluto. Whoever removed Pluto from the list of planets can put that in their pipe and smoke it.
10:53
"Massive stars are the party animals [of the stellar world]. They live fast and die young." I love this talk.
10:56
Prof. Ghez suggested that one possible theory for the current structure of our galaxy is that there was a 'prima donna' black hole at the center of our galaxy that has now settled down. It's nice to see that nature provides us a model for transitioning from youth to old age.
11:00
She ended exactly on time. It's beyond rare to see a scientist stop talking when he or she is supposed to. The final slide had a 3-D video of stars' movements about the center of the galaxy. I don't think the animation was in real time.
11:02
Professor Kirz opens with "Why do we bother [to do x-ray microscopy]?" I hope he makes this the most memorable plenary talk in FiO/LS history by following up with "I just don't know" and walking off the stage.
11:03
There are good reasons to do x-ray microscopy.
11:05
Prof. Kirz shows a reproduction of a paper from 1918 by Albert Einstein. I love it when people present a proper historical context for their work. Far too few scientists appreciate the history of science in general, and the history of their field in specific.
11:14
Prof. Kirz plugs a talk on the APS nanoprobe (FthM4). If he thinks that talk is worth seeing, it's probably pretty cool
11:15
Other talks he has plugged:
I think I got all of the talks, but I apologize if I did not.
11:27
LSThE is a session on "Get[ting] rid of optics". I actually really like this concept. Prof. Kirz is referring to the fact that computers or other digital processing equipment can do almost everything a lens can do, and it doesn't suffer from aberrations. There are currently problems with removing lenses (the crystallography phase problem). However, this is a really cool and promising area of research as it will probably save graduate students thousands of hours in the lab aligning their optics.
11:34
More plugged talks. Since plenary talks are often more 'popular', I appreciate the work Prof. Kirz went to in finding other talks to plug and make the audience aware of. I apologize for ending two consecutive sentences with prepositions.
On a random note, a woman just stood up and moved seats to sit behind a podium. Now she's leaning around it to see the screens with the presentations.
11:42
She just changed seats again. She's really a bit distracting. The talk is still cool, though. Prof. Kirz is currently talking about ultrafast x-ray imaging. Currently on the screen is a 'test object' that was imaged. The object is a stick figure drawing of two people holding hands under the Sun. Or perhaps it is Prof. Gerz's laser creating a star-like object in the sky.
11:44
A five second break to check the time. Prof. Kirz doesn't want to interrupt lunch. Good scientists and engineers always have their priorities straight.
11:48
The talk is over. X-ray microscopy is cool, and finished 12 minutes early.
11:49
To wrap up - two spectacular talks. The FiO/LS really did a great job picking speakers. Interesting topics and good speakers. A great combination.
*I got the idea for a retroactive live blog from Bill Simmons, ESPN's Sports Guy. Always give credit where credit is due.
Plenary Session Retroactive Live Blog*
10:27
Before we begin, let's introduce our two speakers. First up will be Prof. Andrea M. Ghez from UCLA. The title of her talk is "Unveiling a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy." The second talk is by Prof. Janos Kirz from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He will be giving the talk "X-Ray Microscopy."
10:30
Introductions are being given by co-chair Thomas Carruthers. Prof. Ghez is distinguished and a delightful speaker. Sometimes very impressive people are incredibly dry and boring. She gets major points for having cartoons on most of her introductory slides. I'm hooked.
10:35
Prof. Ghez just shrunk the Earth into the size of a sugar cube. Don't get worried. She also compressed the Sun to the size of a university campus. I think we're fine since they both got scaled by about the same amount.
10:36
Whenever people show off pictures from astronomy and astrophysics, I really feel jealous that I'm not doing something so cool. Astronomers really produce some of the best images in science.
10:38
Prof. Ghez just referred to super-massive black holes as 'prima donnas'. I'm glad that everyone anthropomorphizes (?) their research.
10:46
Prof. Ghez shines laser light into the atmosphere to 'fake' a star for their adaptive optics. That's awesome. Really, she's stimulating strong emissions in the atmosphere that are approximately as bright as 'bright' stars are. This provides a guide for the manner in which the atmosphere distorts the field she and collaborators are trying to observe.
10:50
Prof. Ghez just showed a diagram of the solar system. It included Pluto. Whoever removed Pluto from the list of planets can put that in their pipe and smoke it.
10:53
"Massive stars are the party animals [of the stellar world]. They live fast and die young." I love this talk.
10:56
Prof. Ghez suggested that one possible theory for the current structure of our galaxy is that there was a 'prima donna' black hole at the center of our galaxy that has now settled down. It's nice to see that nature provides us a model for transitioning from youth to old age.
11:00
She ended exactly on time. It's beyond rare to see a scientist stop talking when he or she is supposed to. The final slide had a 3-D video of stars' movements about the center of the galaxy. I don't think the animation was in real time.
11:02
Professor Kirz opens with "Why do we bother [to do x-ray microscopy]?" I hope he makes this the most memorable plenary talk in FiO/LS history by following up with "I just don't know" and walking off the stage.
11:03
There are good reasons to do x-ray microscopy.
11:05
Prof. Kirz shows a reproduction of a paper from 1918 by Albert Einstein. I love it when people present a proper historical context for their work. Far too few scientists appreciate the history of science in general, and the history of their field in specific.
11:14
Prof. Kirz plugs a talk on the APS nanoprobe (FthM4). If he thinks that talk is worth seeing, it's probably pretty cool
11:15
Other talks he has plugged:
- I wrote down 'LSThG1', but I can't find this talk. If anyone else took notes, please help! It was listed at the same time as LSMH2 . . .
- LSMH2
- FTuZ1
- FTuZ2
- FThA4
I think I got all of the talks, but I apologize if I did not.
11:27
LSThE is a session on "Get[ting] rid of optics". I actually really like this concept. Prof. Kirz is referring to the fact that computers or other digital processing equipment can do almost everything a lens can do, and it doesn't suffer from aberrations. There are currently problems with removing lenses (the crystallography phase problem). However, this is a really cool and promising area of research as it will probably save graduate students thousands of hours in the lab aligning their optics.
11:34
More plugged talks. Since plenary talks are often more 'popular', I appreciate the work Prof. Kirz went to in finding other talks to plug and make the audience aware of. I apologize for ending two consecutive sentences with prepositions.
- LSThE3
- Andreas Menzel is giving two talks(LSTuL4 and FThT1). One is on Ptychograpy - I have no idea what this word means. Now I have to go to the talk to find out!
- LSThA1
On a random note, a woman just stood up and moved seats to sit behind a podium. Now she's leaning around it to see the screens with the presentations.
11:42
She just changed seats again. She's really a bit distracting. The talk is still cool, though. Prof. Kirz is currently talking about ultrafast x-ray imaging. Currently on the screen is a 'test object' that was imaged. The object is a stick figure drawing of two people holding hands under the Sun. Or perhaps it is Prof. Gerz's laser creating a star-like object in the sky.
11:44
A five second break to check the time. Prof. Kirz doesn't want to interrupt lunch. Good scientists and engineers always have their priorities straight.
11:48
The talk is over. X-ray microscopy is cool, and finished 12 minutes early.
11:49
To wrap up - two spectacular talks. The FiO/LS really did a great job picking speakers. Interesting topics and good speakers. A great combination.
*I got the idea for a retroactive live blog from Bill Simmons, ESPN's Sports Guy. Always give credit where credit is due.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
FiO: Sunday Night Reception
Well, I'm guessing that most people were traveling today. Well, at least most people that are going to FiO. The conference has officially begun. I got up entirely too early this morning to catch my flight out of Chicago - and I missed the Marathon! There was no way to catch my flight and see the beginning of the race. We got in around 2 p.m. and killed some time until the reception, making our first trip to Tandoori. The chicken masala wrap was great.
The reception was nice - I tried the Anchor Steam Beer (a local beer from San Francisco) and was quite happy with it. I always love trying a new beer. Go OSA/Il Fornaio. Ended up eating at Il Fornaio for dinner as well. The 'seconda' portion was far too much food - you've been warned. Dinner was nice, though - I ate with my usual crowd (my academic family) and had a very enjoyable time. It turns out that absence makes the mocking stronger.
I'll be hitting the plenary session in the morning and a few talks in the afternoon. There are three or four more colleagues coming to town tomorrow, as well. I'm sure I'll drink too much coffee and have 'shaking leg syndrome' all throughout the afternoon talks. I also need to finish up my draft of my talks so I can sit down with my advisers and see if they have any serious criticisms or comments. History tells me they'll have comments.
The reception was nice - I tried the Anchor Steam Beer (a local beer from San Francisco) and was quite happy with it. I always love trying a new beer. Go OSA/Il Fornaio. Ended up eating at Il Fornaio for dinner as well. The 'seconda' portion was far too much food - you've been warned. Dinner was nice, though - I ate with my usual crowd (my academic family) and had a very enjoyable time. It turns out that absence makes the mocking stronger.
I'll be hitting the plenary session in the morning and a few talks in the afternoon. There are three or four more colleagues coming to town tomorrow, as well. I'm sure I'll drink too much coffee and have 'shaking leg syndrome' all throughout the afternoon talks. I also need to finish up my draft of my talks so I can sit down with my advisers and see if they have any serious criticisms or comments. History tells me they'll have comments.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Last thoughts before the conference starts
This should be my last post before I land in San Jose - that is where FiO is this year, right? Well, either way, I'll be blogging from San Jose next week. That's where my airline tickets are for and where I have my hotel room reserved. This will be my second trip there for FiO. I've already started planning where I'll eat (thanks to Adam for that). I have to reiterate his point that Tandoori Oven is great for grabbing a quick lunch.
With the conference so close, I'm pretty pumped. Beyond just getting off of UIUC's campus for a week, it'll be nice to see a number of people I only see at conferences. Other things I'm looking forward to:
Sunday will be a long day - I'll be getting up around 6am on Sunday to walk down the block and watch the start of the Chicago Marathon. The one-mile marker is about five blocks from my wife's apartment (for those just showing up to the blog, my wife lives in Chicago and I live in Champaign, where I go to school) and I've made it a tradition to go watch the race. It's almost like exercising. Anyway, after watching the race, we'll probably grab a quick breakfast, and then it'll be off to the airport. I think we're set to get into SJ around lunch, then we'll have the reception at 5pm (but two hours off my normal clock). Hmm, maybe I'll have to skip the marathon this year and sleep in a bit longer . . .
I should be posting every night (Sunday-Thursday) during the conference, and I may have one more on Friday (written during the flight back) as a wrap-up. Some evening posts may turn into early morning posts - it will depend on how late dinner goes any night. I haven't really decided what I'll be writing about once I get to SJ - if there is anything anyone wants me to write about, I will - probably something about various talks, maybe an 'interview' with whoever I can wrangle, etc. If I remember my camera, maybe I'll post a photo-essay from the reception Sunday.
With the conference so close, I'm pretty pumped. Beyond just getting off of UIUC's campus for a week, it'll be nice to see a number of people I only see at conferences. Other things I'm looking forward to:
- The Sunday night reception - hunting for friends and beer.
- The weather - although Illinois is pretty nice right now, it'll be 20 degrees (Fahrenheit - 11 Celsius) warmer in San Jose (SJ).
- Giving my talks - more relief than anything, but I like knowing I have something to say that *someone* thinks is worth hearing.
- Whatever we do Thursday night - the UIUC contingent doesn't fly out until Friday morning, so we'll probably find something fun to do - two years ago we went to San Francisco's Chinatown.
- Getting a souvenir for my wife - not actually looking forward to this, but if I write it down, I might remember.
- Drinks out on the patio - two years ago, many of our friends/collaborators went out on the patio near the hotel (by day, a coffee shop, by night, a relaxing place to sit outside and have a drink from the hotel bar) on at least one night and told stories, made fun of each other, and generally had a good time.
Sunday will be a long day - I'll be getting up around 6am on Sunday to walk down the block and watch the start of the Chicago Marathon. The one-mile marker is about five blocks from my wife's apartment (for those just showing up to the blog, my wife lives in Chicago and I live in Champaign, where I go to school) and I've made it a tradition to go watch the race. It's almost like exercising. Anyway, after watching the race, we'll probably grab a quick breakfast, and then it'll be off to the airport. I think we're set to get into SJ around lunch, then we'll have the reception at 5pm (but two hours off my normal clock). Hmm, maybe I'll have to skip the marathon this year and sleep in a bit longer . . .
I should be posting every night (Sunday-Thursday) during the conference, and I may have one more on Friday (written during the flight back) as a wrap-up. Some evening posts may turn into early morning posts - it will depend on how late dinner goes any night. I haven't really decided what I'll be writing about once I get to SJ - if there is anything anyone wants me to write about, I will - probably something about various talks, maybe an 'interview' with whoever I can wrangle, etc. If I remember my camera, maybe I'll post a photo-essay from the reception Sunday.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
My talks
I mentioned earlier that I'm giving two talks this year at FiO. I'm pretty entertained by this, since they're in the same session, but the papers upon which the talks are based are with different advisors. Both papers are short - five to six pages - so I'm not expecting either talk to be very long. I've mentioned before that I give short talks, and I don't expect this year to be different. However, I am offering a sneak peak on my talks here, exclusive to my loyal viewers!! Okay, no one was excited about that, but it gives me something to talk about . . .
I don't remember the order of my talks, but the one I'll call the first one is on the changes in the generalized spectra of cyclostationary fields upon propagation. In less technical words, we were looking to see what effects, if any, appear when one considers a series of pulses instead of a continuous field in a statistical optical setting. Sure, not exactly a popular description, but it'll have to suffice. We see some pretty cool effects with regards to spectral shifts and changes in the spectral correlation functions.
The second talk is on the state of polarization from a field produced in an N-pinhole interferometer. We make some simplifying assumptions about the symmetry of the system we consider and produce some very pretty pictures. The images we show illustrate the diversity of polarization states when the number of pinholes (N) is three or larger. I would post the pictures, but what would entice you to come to the talk then?
I'm thinking about dressing differently for each talk. I'm not sure how I'll pull that off in the 30 minutes between talks without being very rude to the other speakers, but I think it'd be quite entertaining. Maybe a fake mustache? Any reasonable suggestions will be implemented, unless the conflict with a better suggestion.
As a public service warning, I just gave the I-Optics seminar at U of I this week, and I'm pretty sure I put 90% of the crowd to sleep. I-Optics is a new seminar series on campus for presenting local (U of I) research in optics. I was the first non-professor to present this year, and the only student on the docket so far. I'm not sure my talk will encourage more students to participate, but I got a good idea of how my talk is constructed.
My seminar talk covered the same material as my talks from the previous two FiO meetings as well as this year's first talk, not just the spectral shifts topic, but it was still quite dry, apparently. I had thought the talk had enough pictures and not too many equations in it, but I clearly misjudged the content. No one actually walked out, which is good, but I think only three people were paying attention towards the end. Hopefully I can recalibrate before FiO. I'm now a Young Professional in the OSA, so I don't have the 'student' tag to hide behind if my talk sucks. I'll see if I can't add some more pictures and rely less on 'intuitive' explanations of equations.
I don't remember the order of my talks, but the one I'll call the first one is on the changes in the generalized spectra of cyclostationary fields upon propagation. In less technical words, we were looking to see what effects, if any, appear when one considers a series of pulses instead of a continuous field in a statistical optical setting. Sure, not exactly a popular description, but it'll have to suffice. We see some pretty cool effects with regards to spectral shifts and changes in the spectral correlation functions.
The second talk is on the state of polarization from a field produced in an N-pinhole interferometer. We make some simplifying assumptions about the symmetry of the system we consider and produce some very pretty pictures. The images we show illustrate the diversity of polarization states when the number of pinholes (N) is three or larger. I would post the pictures, but what would entice you to come to the talk then?
I'm thinking about dressing differently for each talk. I'm not sure how I'll pull that off in the 30 minutes between talks without being very rude to the other speakers, but I think it'd be quite entertaining. Maybe a fake mustache? Any reasonable suggestions will be implemented, unless the conflict with a better suggestion.
As a public service warning, I just gave the I-Optics seminar at U of I this week, and I'm pretty sure I put 90% of the crowd to sleep. I-Optics is a new seminar series on campus for presenting local (U of I) research in optics. I was the first non-professor to present this year, and the only student on the docket so far. I'm not sure my talk will encourage more students to participate, but I got a good idea of how my talk is constructed.
My seminar talk covered the same material as my talks from the previous two FiO meetings as well as this year's first talk, not just the spectral shifts topic, but it was still quite dry, apparently. I had thought the talk had enough pictures and not too many equations in it, but I clearly misjudged the content. No one actually walked out, which is good, but I think only three people were paying attention towards the end. Hopefully I can recalibrate before FiO. I'm now a Young Professional in the OSA, so I don't have the 'student' tag to hide behind if my talk sucks. I'll see if I can't add some more pictures and rely less on 'intuitive' explanations of equations.
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