News

Chapter Welcoming Party

Our 1st Chapter Welcoming Party was held on the 24th of April 2008. Members were forced to take the afternoon off from their exciting research and join in some fun and networking. The principal of plasma creation was demonstrated by means of a braai! Unfortunately, some raw meat got burned during the experiment, although much to the delight of attending chapter members. The event was a huge success as members socialized and got to know the person behind the laser safety goggles.

Going East...

The Advanced Solid-State Photonics Topical Meeting remains the world's premier forum for discussing new developments in solid-state lasers and nonlinear optical materials and devices. The 23rd ASSP meeting was held in the Picturesque city of Nara, Japan. Edward Bernhardi presented part of his Masters work, entitled Investigating Thermal Stresses in Quasi-CW Pumped Tm:YLF Laser Crystals.

Uniting Nations

The 3rd EBAL (Environmental & Biological Applications of Lasers) institute was held in Cairo, Egypt this year. The US-African Advanced Studies Institute aims to bring together experts & students from various research centres within the US and Africa, to investigate the numerous applications of lasers within the environmental & biological fields.

Melanie McLaren was part of the South African group that attended the thought-provoking workshop, and presented her work in Optical Tweezing.

SAIP 2008 - LIMPOPO

The 53rd South African Institute of Physics annual conference was held in Limpopo, Polokwane in July of this year. 

The conference was a great success and most of our members presented their on-going work.  In particular, Angela Dudley won the best PhD poster in the Lasers, Optics & Spectroscopy group. Congratulations Ange!

Optics & Photonics, San Diego

In August this year, five of our members attended the SPIE Optics & Photonics conference held in San Diego.  Melanie McLaren received the travel grant from SPIE.

They attended the Leadership workshop held before the official start of the conference, which introduced many new ideas for future activity plans.

Our chapter also manned a booth in the exhibition hall, displaying the past years activities and outreach programs.

Collaborating with Belarus

Angela Dudley and Mapula De Gama spent  the month of September in  Minsk, Belarus.

They both worked alongside researchers at the National Academy of Science on a number of projects. This was the beginning of a long-term collaboration between the two groups.

Frontiers in Optics, Rochester

The Frontiers in Optics 2008/Laser Science (LS) XXIV conference held in Rochester, NY in October this year was attended by Melanie McLaren. The trip was sponsored by OSA for one chapter from each chapter.

The annual student chapter leadership meeting was honoured by guest speaker, Nobel Prize winner, Prof. Emil Wolf!

Cheese & Wine - End of year Party

We ended off our first year as a chapter with a cheese & wine event. The 2008/2009 chapter leaders were announced. Congratulations to Angela Dudley, Saturin Ombinda, Dineo Moema, Melanie McLaren, Mapula Mametja and Cobus Jacobs!

We hope the next year will be even more productive than the last.

South Africa