February, 2015 Annual report Bilkent University SPIE student chapter. Mite Mijalkov SPIE STUDENT CHAPTER PRESIDENT BILKENT UNIVERSITY

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1 February, 2015 Annual report 2014 Bilkent University SPIE student chapter Mite Mijalkov SPIE STUDENT CHAPTER PRESIDENT BILKENT UNIVERSITY

2 1. Members of Bilkent University SPIE chapter 1.1. Elected officials Mite Mijalkov President Merve Yagmur Yardimci* - Vice president merveyardimci@gmail.com Naveed Mehmood* - Secretary and treasurer naveed.mehmood@bilkent.edu.tr * These officials are in the process of the renewing their membership to SPIE and will serve as main organizers for FOCUS 2015 Ankara (if granted, please see section Future activities) 1.2. Members Seyma Canik Mustafa Erol Tugba Kiris Mohammad Amin Nazirzadeh Ercag Pince Burak Tekcan 1

3 2. Chapter activities Year 2014 The first half of the year 2014 was spent on our organization of the student conference IONS 15 which was a coordinated effort between the SPIE chapters of Bilkent University and Middle East Techical University in addition to the corresponding OSA chapters. The activities included inviting speakers for the conference, searching for additional funding and promoting the conference among the student body in Turkey. The second half of the last year was spend trying to recruit new members for our chapter. Namely, for many members last year was the one in which they successfully defended their M.S. thesis and moved on to another institutes so we organized few gatherings, seminars explaining our goals. For more details, please see the next sections Organization of IONS 15 Figure 1: Participants at IONS 15 in front of the conference venue 2

4 Figure 2: Yazgan Tuna (one of the IONS15 organizers and former member of our SPIE student chapter) together with Dr.Philip Russell, Dr. Charles M. Falco and Dr. Giovanni Volpe IONS 15 took place on 2-5 July 2014 in Bilkent University. The conference attracted more than 100 participants of which 45 were from outside of Turkey, including graduate students from University of Zanjan Iran, University of Oxford UK, The University of Naples Federico II Italy etc. In addition, we were able to attract a very diverse audience from inside Turkey, coming from Bilkent University, METU, Bogazici University, Hacettepe University etc. The scientific part of the conference included a series of talks given by our plenary speakers: Dr. H. Phillip Stahl Immediate Past President of SPIE, Dr. Philip Russell President of OSA and Dr. Charles M. Falco Chair of Condensed Matter Physics at University of Arizona. These talks were complemented by the talks of the local invited speakers including, Dr. Rasit Turan from METU and Dr. F. Omer Ilday from Bilkent University. The invited speakers session ended with the inspiration talk of Dr. Giovanni Volpe, who is also the advisor of our chapter, who Figure 3: Organizing team of IONS 15 shared his opinions and offered some most insightful remarks on how to succeed in science and become respected researchers in our respective fields. The conference ended with a trip to the beautiful historic region of Cappadocia, which was a great opportunity to visit some exceptional natural wonders as well as strengthen our friendship, have fun together hoping that our acquaintances last for the many years to come. This conference was partly supported by the SPIE Activity grants (combination of the grants obtained from Bilkent University and METU) as well as the travelling lecturer program of SPIE. 3

5 2.2. Coffee breaks with the local invited speakers Many students expressed their satisfaction from the talk A PhD is not enough from Dr. Giovanni Volpe. They felt that such talks, about the challenges of publishing in physics to the solving research problems or creating a peer networks was very rewarding in the sense that it gave them the feeling that they are not alone with their problems and had the positive effect on them by providing the initiative and encouragement for their ongoing work. That prompted us to organize few coffee sessions with professors from Figure 4: Giovanni Volpe during his talk: "A PhD is not enough" Bilkent University in which the students could discuss the strategies for solving problems, how to choose the next steps in their careers etc. Some of the professors that agreed to participate include Dr. Giovanni Volpe, Dr. Atilla Aydinli, Dr. Miguel Navascues etc. All the coffee breaks were informal and took place at the lounge at the Advanced Research Laboratories (ARL) at Bilkent Unviersity Promotions during the Physics Department Colloquia The Physics department in the Bilkent Universities organizes a series of colloquia on various topics that brings together many students eager to learn. Although we were not directly involved in the organizing of these lectures, we used this opportunity to speak to many graduate and undergraduate students, spreading the work about our activities and conferences. We believe that part of the ample participation at IONS 15 was due to our extensive advertising plan and these colloquia were the perfect platform to perform this advertising. Figure 5: Some chapter members on a dinner with Dr. Rasit Turan 4

6 2.4. Meeting with prospective members After the successful organization of IONS we faced with shortages in our chapter members part to the graduation of few members. Therefore, towards the end of 2014 and beginning of 2015 we organized a couple of informal dinners, in order to attract new members to join our chapter and participate actively in our future planned activities. We have some new members join and we expect a few more in order to have our chapter in good standing and continue with our work. This dinners were supported by the remaining funds from the IONS conference, in part from the activity grants supplied by SPIE and a conference grant granted by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. Figure 6: First meeting of the chapter student members in Total expenses 3.1. IONS 15 Transportation 500$ Food 2450$ Welcome bags 50$ Student travel grants 2000$ Lecturer travel grants 3.2. Coffee breaks with invited speakers Cookies 200$ Tea and coffee 50$ 3.3. Physics department colloquia No expenses 5

7 3.4. Dinner with prospective members 200$ per dinner We used SPIE activity grants from Bilkent University and METU to fund a portion of the above expenses. Other funds were raised from The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey and OSA as well as sponsorship from UNAM Bilkent University and GUNAM METU. In addition we used our travel lecturer program from SPIE in order to fund the travel expenses of one plenary speaker. 4. Future Activities 4.1. First meeting The purpose of this meeting will be to bring everyone (new students such as freshmen as well as participating members who were not involved too much into our activities) up to speed and to inform them about our activities and our goals for This meeting is planned to take the form of a seminar about our SPIE Student Chapter and include the presentation of Dr. Giovanni Volpe and our guest, Dr. Alpan Bek, the academic advisors of the chapter at Bilkent Uni. and METU respectively Seminars We are planning to have few seminars this year. These seminars will be given by representatives of companies interested in optics, photonics and other branches of applied physics. These seminars will be opened for general audience FOCUS 2015 Ankara We are hoping to organize a FOCUS conference in July, The conference will be held in Bilkent University and is organized with the cooperation of the SPIE student chapter in METU. We have already submitted our application form for this conference and in anticipation of the decision whether we are going to be given this opportunity, we 6

8 did some preliminary preparations such as recruiting new members to be part of the organizing committee, making preliminary contact with some speakers we are planning to invite as well as contacting some companies and TUBITAK for additional funds. Having had the chance to previously organize such a conference we are confident that we can learn from our experiences and have a successful and fun FOCUS conference in Ankara. 7