Optics & Photonics News - July/August 2010

Increasingly,
major meet-
ings are being
held in devel-
oping areas,
sponsored or
co-sponsored
by sister
societies in
these regions.”
“

ne of OSA’s goals as a global society is to expand our products and services for
the international optics and photonics community. A key way in which we do
this is through our meetings and conferences. Increasingly, major meetings are being held
in developing areas, sponsored or co-sponsored by sister societies in these regions. In Febru-
ary I reported on two Pacific Rim events, the Australasian Conference on Optics, Lasers
and Spectroscopy/Australian Conference on Optical Fibre Technology, and the Optical
Society of Korea’s 20th Anniversary Meeting. In September, I’ll attend three meetings in
South America: Speckle 2010, RIAO-OPTILAS 2010, and the first Latin American Optics
and Photonics Conference (LAOP).

“Speckle 2010” is the fourth international conference on areas and applications of speckle to be held since the series launched in 2000 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Previous Speckle conferences were held in 2003 in Trondheim, Norway, and in 2006 in Nimes, France. The 2010 conference, “Speckle Fields Forever,” will be held September 13-15 in Florianópolis, Brazil, on the Island of Santa Catarina. I’m very pleased to have been asked to serve as one of the keynote speakers at the conference. I hope to have some time to explore the island’s historic architecture and 42 beaches during my stay, but I have no plans to participate in the surfing activity that is so popular there.

RIAO/OPTILAS, the 7th Ibero-American Meeting on Optics and 10th Latino-Ameri-can Meeting on Optics, Lasers and Applications, will take place September 20-24 in Lima City, Peru. For the first time, the conference will be associated with the Andean School, which will offer a series of tutorials and workshops to give the participants (mainly students) the necessary background to profit from the technical talks. The School will also introduce students to areas of research in optics and its applications, hopefully motivating them to pursue further studies. I’m keenly interested in anything that will encourage student interest in optics and photonics, so I think this is a great development.

LAOP, to be held in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, from Sept. 27-30, 2010, will be sponsored by OSA and the Brazilian Physical Society. Thanks to its ethanol program, Brazil is recognized as one of the most prominent countries in using renewable energies. While covering the wide field of photonics from optical communications to biomedical applications, the LAOP conference will have a special focus on solar energy. Solar energy is under development in Pernambuco, and eolic (wind) energy is already in use there. Two major Federal universities, Federal Technological Institutes and technological parks are located in Recife, so I’m looking forward to interacting with young students and researchers at the conference. Anderson S.L. Gomes, chair-elect of OSA’s International Council, is serving as the conference general chair.

In this issue, we continue our year-long celebration of LaserFest with two laser-related articles: a feature on laser-based weather control on p. 22, and an article on holography and the laser on p. 34. Also, don’t forget to vote in the OSA election! Statements from the candidates for OSA vice president and directors at large are on p. 56. I hope you’ll read them carefully and cast your vote before the election closes on October 1.