Ancona Chapter visits the Optoelectronic Research Centre

May 5-9, 2009

A group of 20 Masters and PhD students from the OSA Student Chapter of the Università Politecnica delle Marche in Ancona, Italy, spent two days visiting the Optoelectronic Research Centre (ORC) in Southampton and met the Southampton OSA Student Chapter.

Following the interest to visit the ORC, the Southampton OSA Student Chapter arranged a two day visit for the Italian student chapter with an agenda including both academic and social activities.

Over the two days the visitors attended presentations from ORC researchers which, along with the lab tours, aimed at giving an overview of the broad research activity carried out: from Fibre Lasers and Sensors to Optical Communications, from Bio- to Nano-Photonics. The student had also the chance to see the new facilities the ORC is going to start using in September.

Moreover, Professor Francesco Simoni, who accompanied the Italian students, gave a seminar open to researchers in optics and photonics from various department of the university (ORC, Physics, ECS, etc) entitled "Polymers and liquid crystals for photonics" outlining the research activity carried out by the Photonic Materials group at Università Politecnica delle Marche.

The two OSA Student Chapters presented the activities that they run at their institutions along the academic year and shared thoughts and ideas.

The members of the chapters had also the possibility to tight extra-scientific bonds during the other activities planned for the visit, which included a dinner at restaurant La Cantina, the ORC’s annual International Food Day and a tour of the historical city of Winchester which ended with a typical english pub crawl.

The visit was a great success and provided an opportunity for the students to network, find out about each others research and make contacts for the future..

Southampton OSA Student Chapter hopes that visits to the ORC from other student chapters may be organised in the future.