Presentations

    Memorization or understanding: Are we teaching the right thing?, at 2003 Education and Training in Optics and Photonics (Tucson, AZ), Wednesday, October 8, 2003:
    Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is what is mostly done in large introductory courses. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information delivered to them. "Peer Instruction" shifts the focus in lectures from delivering information to synthesizing information and achieves remarkable improvements in student understanding.
    Femtosecond laser micromachining: Applications in photonics and biology, at XIX Laser Science Conference (Tucson, AZ), Thursday, October 9, 2003:
    When femtosecond laser pulses are focused tightly into a transparent material, permanent structural or chemical changes occur. These changes can be used for micromachining bulk transparent materials. A number of applications in the fabrication of micro-optical devices and in biology and medicine will be discussed.
    The Interactive Learning Toolkit: supporting interactive classrooms, at 128th National AAPT meeting (Miami, FL), Monday, January 26, 2004:
    Research-based interactive learning techniques have dramatically improved student understanding. We have created the 'Interactive Learning Toolkit' (ILT), a web-based learning management system, to help implement two such pedagogies: Just in Time Teaching and Peer Instruction. Our main goal in developing this toolkit is to save the instructor time and effort and to use technology to facilitate the interaction between the students and the instructor (and between students themselves). After a brief review of both pedagogies, we will demonstrate the many exciting new features of the ILT. We will... Read more about The Interactive Learning Toolkit: supporting interactive classrooms
    Wrapping light around a hair, at IInd Mexican Meeting on Mathematical and Experimental Physics, Colegio Nacional (Mexico City, Mexico), Friday, September 10, 2004:
    Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, round a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was ’no’. We developed a technique for drawing long, free-standing silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a very uniform diameter. Light can be launched into these silica nanowires by optical evanescent coupling and the wires allow low-loss single-mode operation. They can be bent sharply, making it possible to... Read more about Wrapping light around a hair
    Wrapping light around a hair, at InternationalConference on Applications of Lasers and Electro-Optics 2004 (San Francisco, CA), Monday, October 4, 2004:
    Can light be guided by a fiber whose diameter is much smaller than the wavelength of the light? Can we mold the flow of light on the micrometer scale so it wraps, say, around a hair? Until recently the answer to these questions was ‘no’. We developed a technique for drawing long, free-standing silica wires with diameters down to 50 nm that have a surface smoothness at the atomic level and a very uniform diameter. Light can be launched into these silica nanowires by optical evanescent coupling and the wires allow low-loss single-mode operation. They can be bent sharply, making it possible to... Read more about Wrapping light around a hair
    Femtosecond laser-assisted microstructuring of silicon surfaces for novel detector, sensing, and display technologies, at 41st Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (Lincoln, NE), Monday, October 11, 2004:
    Irridiating silicon surfaces with trains of ultrashort laser pulses in the presence of a sulfur containing gas drastically changes the structure and properties of silicon. The normally smooth and highly reflective surface develops a forest of sharp microscopic spikes. The microstructured surface is highly absorbing even at wavelengths beyond the bandgap of silicon and has many interesting novel applications.
    Peer Instruction: Discussion and brains-on demonstration, at 2004 New Faculty Workshop, American Center for Physics (College Park, MD), Friday, November 5, 2004:
    The basic goals of Peer Instruction are to encourage and make use of student interaction during lectures, while focusing students' attention on underlying concepts and techniques. The method has been assessed in many studies using standardized, diagnostic tests and shown to be considerably more effective than the conventional lecture approach to teaching. Peer Instruction is now used in a wide range of science and math courses at the college and secondary level. In this workshop, participants will learn about Peer Instruction, serve as the “class” in which Peer Instruction is demonstrated,... Read more about Peer Instruction: Discussion and brains-on demonstration
    Active learning and interactive lectures, at 2004 New Faculty Workshop, American Center for Physics (College Park, MD), Friday, November 5, 2004:
    Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is what is mostly done in large introductory courses -- instructors present material (even though this material might be readily available in printed form) and for students the main purpose of lectures is to take down as many notes as they can. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information delivered to them. Yet synthesis is perhaps the most important -- and most elusive -- aspect of education. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to synthesizing... Read more about Active learning and interactive lectures
    Femtosecond laser micromachining of glass for photonics applications, at Glass & Optical Materials Division Fall 2004 Meeting (Cape Canaveral, FL), Monday, November 8, 2004:
    When femtosecond laser pulses are focused tightly into a transparent material, the intensity in the focal volume can become high enough to cause nonlinear absorption of laser energy. The absorption, in turn, can lead to permanent structural or chemical changes. Such changes can be used for micromachining bulk transparent materials. Applications include data storage and the writing of waveguides and waveguide splitters in bulk glass, fabrication of micromechanical devices in polymers, and subcellular photodisruption inside single cells. In this talk we will review recent results obtained in... Read more about Femtosecond laser micromachining of glass for photonics applications
    Subwavelength-diameter silica wires for microscale optical components, at SPIE Photonics West 2005 Conference (San Jose, CA), Monday, January 24, 2005:
    Optical components built from structures that are tens of micrometers wide are playing a key role in current optical communication networks, optical sensors, and medical optical devices. The demand for improved performance, broader applications, and higher integration density, together with rapid advances in nanotechnology for electronics and optoelectronics, has spurred an effort to reduce the size of basic optical components. However, the miniaturization of optical components with subwavelength and nanometer-sized optical guiding structures through established fabrication methods is... Read more about Subwavelength-diameter silica wires for microscale optical components

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