No, I am not an OSA staff

There is someone who asked me: do they let you come to the conference for blogging? Are you OSA staff?

I said: no, my talk is accepted then I volunteer to be the blogger. The order is very important.

You may wonder why I want to do this. True, I want to go to most of the talks. Some of the talks run in parallel session I wish I could be at both of them. I have a family which I want to spend time with. The responsibility of writing blog is constantly on my mind, which adds some extra stress to the trip. And last I have to get up sometimes 4am in the morning writing in the bathroom so that I don’t wake up my kids.

I myself don’t know why I want to do this. But on the way here someone left a recent issue of the New Yorker on the plane. I read an excellent article “A woman’s place, can Sheryl Sandberg upend silicon valley’s male-dominated culture?” by Ken Auletta. It is so interesting that I read the 9 page article all at once.

Sandberg was vice president for global on line sales at Google before she joined Facebook. Three years after she joined, Facebook is profitable.

In the article, Ken Auletta writes:

"Last December, Sandberg spoke at the TEDWomen conference. Her black hair framed her was young. Sandberg began by celebrating the progress women have made: “For any of us in this room today, let’s start out by admitting we’re lucky. We don’t live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited.” More women than men graduate from college and graduate school, and receive doctoral degrees. Yet, she went on, “women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, thirteen per cent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top—C-level jobs, board seats—tops out at fifteen, sixteen per cent.”

To solve this problem, she proposed doing three things. First, she said, women need to “sit at the table.” She said that fifty-seven per cent of men entering the workforce negotiate their salaries, but that only seven per cent of women do likewise. Second, at home, “make sure your partner is a real partner.” On average, she said, women do two-thirds of the housework and three-fourths of the child care. And, finally, “don’t leave before you leave.” When a woman starts thinking of having children, “she doesn’t raise her hand anymore. . . . She starts leaning back.” In other words, if women don’t get the job they want before they take a break to have children, they often don’t come back. "

I don’t want to lean back. I am still trying to move forward with my very limited working time. Maybe that’s the reason why I want to do this despite all the trouble.

Wired internet is free at the hotel room for NLO attendees

When you connect, you will see a message saying it is $14.95/day.
However, Brook at the registration confirmed to me that they have talked to the hotel and this charge will not show on your hotel bill.

A few things about the hotel

We came 1 day early, exhausted after the long trip and 5 hours jet lag. But we were super excited when we arrived at the hotel. We have a room with a view:


There is a few things I would like to share with you.

Right by the elevator, there is a woman who gives welcome package, she gives us a discount card and a nice map. Also much useful information such as the “fresh fruit market."

The restaurant close by is pricey, the food is very good though. If you don’t mind an extra 5 to 10 mintues walk, there is a “beach hut” which is much cheaper yet has very good food. We had catch of the day—"atti fish" yesterday. The salad with the papaya seed salad dressing is very fresh and tasty. There are roosters and hens who will eat your leftovers, if you have any!



Monday and Tuesday there is a hotel shuttle to the city mall. You can get groceries and also eat. It starts at 9:30 am in the morning and leaves every 30 minutes. The shuttle stops at 3pm.

Timothy Lee, a student from Optoelectornics research center, Univ. of Southampton, came a few days early. He gathered a lot of information and toured part of the city by BUS! Many places you can go by bus if you don’t have a rental car. The fare is pretty cheap.

Last don’t forget to check the weather forecast every day.

Talk in the wrong session?

I met Professor Masayuki Katsuragawa from Texas A&M University annual PQE conference, organized by Dr. Scully and Dr. Welch. We had always been in the same molecular modulation session.

Yesterday, surprisingly, I found he was in the Monday Quantum Optics session. His topic is “generation, manupulatoin, and characterization of highly discrete coherent spectrum” which shows beautiful square and triangular waveforms. The paper "A 10 THz ultrafast function generator—generation of rectangular and triangular pulse trains" is published recently in new journal of physics.



(From http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/13/2/023030/fulltext)

He refered to Professor Andy Kung’s talk in Friday my session---- frequency combs and waveform synthesis. Unfortunately, professor Kung didn’t arrive until after lunch so he missed his talk.

Dr. Sokolov, my supervisor, mentioned to me that this is actually a good thing. Instead of limit similar talks to one session, this helps more people to see our work.

QPM 35 years old

In the Monday Planary session, Professor Martin Fejer decided to give a history of the quasi-phase matching, instead of the “current topics” as he planned. He said while he was researching the topic---history of QPM, he found many things “surprise me” so “might be interesting to you.”

The history was fancinating. Especially I found that a research area can start so “fast” ----1961 SHG was demonstrated, 1962 the paper on birefringent phase matching was published-----yet takes so many years to develop and can continue for many years more.

QPM was first used by A. Szillagyi in 1976. Now there are new topics such as aperiodic QPM gratings. I find these two topics in the Monday morning sessison very interesting; slant quasi phase matching, which has the possibility of developing high power lasers, and fabrication of a new walk off compensationg BBO periodic structure using the room-temperature bonding technique, which generates twice the SH UV power of a bulk BBO with the same length.

Aloha, 2011 NLO, a family friendly conference

Registration desk

By the end of the opening remarks for the conference, Wayne H. Knox, professor from Inst. Of Optics Univ. of Rochester introduced his wife and said (not exactly like this, I tried my best to remember):

“Many years ago, we came here for a conference. We had only 1 kid. Each time after we go back from the conference, we have a new baby. Now we have 6 kids and 1 grandkid.

Once during NLO conference, someone asked: "What do you do with our spouses?" Then we decided to have a Hawaiian cultural workshop for the families. It was very successful.

This year, there will be a workshop as well. People can learn and also have a chance to perform at the wed. conference Luau. “

His wife started the conference with a beautiful Traditional Hawaian chant.

Indeed, this is a really family friendly conference. Many attendees bring their families with them. The hotel, as a resort, has many kids activities. For example, they have Koi Fish feeding every morning and evening.



I saw many professors enjoy family time at the kids swimming pool. It has a slide. Kids absolutely love it.




Hope you all enjoy the conference like I do.

Laser light show vs fireworks---Tradition wins. For now!

When I heard about that the laser light show was going to replace the fireworks, I was pretty disappointed. The fireworks has been part of the July 4th “I love America” celebration at Brazos Valley, where Texas A&M University is located, since the early ’50s.

Fireworks were invented in China in the 7th century to scare away evil spirits. I have been to one international fireworks festival at Hangzhou, China. Many hours of beautiful fireworks went on and on. It is beyond description.

The July 4th show here at TAMU is short, only 15 minutes. Yet it was enough to amaze my 3 year old last year. She mentioned it many times after that. Until I got the notice of cancellation I keep telling her that there will be no fireworks but a laser light show.

A laser light show is meaningless to her. She has no response to it and continues to ask me for fireworks show. We went to the celebration. I showed her the spots on the wall. She was not amused. We left early.

I am not the only one who was disappointed. Our school paper, Battalion, had a huge headline: "Laser Light Letdown" on Wednesday.

Lasers are fascinating but I guess as far as competing with fireworks is concerned, it lost.

At least for now! Let's remember that. So many of our OSA Student Chapters are reaching out in schools and sharing the wonder of optics and photonics, including the chapter at Texas A&M. So while my dear child prefers fireworks now, some day a laser may win the day.

I remember my own interest in optics and photonics. Its roots go all the way back to when I was a child. My brother, who is 10 years older than me and then a physics undergraduate, let sunlight shine on a mirror, which is half immersed in a basin of water. Suddenly, when the angle was right, there were many beautiful colors dancing on the wall. We did it again and again. I was so impressed. Since then I have been fascinated by light. I later chose optics as my major in one of the best Institute of Optics in China. Now after many years of working in optics I can fully appreciate the beauty of laser and may other things in optics and photonics.

I hope the beautiful color of fireworks can inspire my daughter. In the future, when she is prepared with science knowledge and she will be able to look the world differently (deeply) and can appreciate the things even the eyes can’t see.

See everyone in at the conference!