News From Local Section

Clemson University Student Chapter Update

The Clemson University OSA Chapter has a close tie with Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies (COMSET) on a few projects and has been fortunate enough to use their facility; Advanced Material Research Laboratories (AMRL) is located at 91 Technology Dr., Anderson, SC  29625. Two representatives from the Clemson OSA Chapter (Stephen Budy, OSA president, and Chris Huebner, OSA secretary) attended the Frontiers in Optics (FiO) meeting in San Jose, CA on September 2007, as well as the OSA Student Chapter Leadership Meeting. Many of our members presented talks and posters at the Southeast Regional American Chemical Society (SERMACS) meeting in Greenville, SC on October 24-27, 2007. In addition, many of our members presented talks and posters at both American Chemical Society (ACS) national meetings in Chicago and Boston on 2007. We are looking forward to the upcoming ACS meeting in New Orleans, LA on April 6-10, 2008, as many of our members will be presenting talks and posters.

Recently, we volunteered for the Engineering and Science Expo. The purpose of this event was to encourage interest from Kindergarten-12th grade students by allowing them to interact with college students who are actively involved in engineering and science organizations. Over 500 students from the surrounding schools were currently registered to attend the expo. The event was sponsored by the Office of Recruitment for the College of Engineering and Science at Clemson University.

    
Thanks to Stephen Budy, Chris Huebner, Mary Salazar, Ali Foguth, Craig Syzymanski, JJ Grimland, Ryan Roeder, and Parul Rungta for volunteering their time and Clemson University, OSA, and COMSET for their support.

We have started regular monthly meetings held every Tuesday at the end of each month at 6:00 pm in the Advanced Material Research Laboratory 1st floor conference room. We use this as a recruiting method and as a way to bring all of our members together from different departments, including chemistry, materials science and engineering, physics, and engineering. We have invited Clemson University professors to come give talks about their research to enlighten us about current optics technology, and we have two members per meeting give a talk about their own research to give us practice in communicating our own work and to encourage collaboration among the university.

   
OSA monthly meeting held on October 2007 with invited speaker John Ballato, Associate Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and Director of the Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies (COMSET).