IONS Exchange: Ancona OSA Student Chapter goes ICFO

5-8 May 2007

The OSA Student Chapter of the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Ancona/Italy visited ICFO for two days to meet the members of the ICFO-OSA Student chapter and to have a close-up look at the research done in ICFO. Participating in the exchange were 19 master students, PhD students, PostDocs and their advisor, Professor F. Simoni, from the physics and engineering department.

The two days were densily packed with programme: Directly after their arrvial at ICFO presentations on the two institutes in Ancona and ICFO itself were given by Student Chapter members. The morning of the second day was dedicated to the student chapters. Besides talks on the two chapters and a presentation of the IONS project there was time to exchange ideas and to learn more about each other´s activites.

The highlight for our italian visitors were certainly the six lab tours in the afternoons which covered the areas of Quantum Optics, Nano-, Bio- and Nonlinear Optics and gave them an insight into the broad field of research at ICFO. The lab tours and ICFO´s traditional afternoon coffee break provided many possibilities to meet ICFO´s scientists and to learn more not only about the research but also about the people behind it. Since many of the students had an engineering background in optics, they enjoyed an insight into rather purely physical subjects, e.g. Quantum Computing, as well.

The non-scientific part of the programme included a dinner in a traditional spanish Paella restaurant and offered possibilites to built up new friendships between young Ancona and ICFO researchers out off the lab. The ICFO-OSA student chapter is looking forward to meet the Ancona OSA Student Chapter after this first meeting soon again at the IONS meeting in Southampton.