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International OSA Student Chapters Network (IONS) Kicks off in Barcelona

 The International OSA Network of Student-Chapters (IONS) Project aims at strengthening both professional and personal ties amongst young researchers. At The Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) Barcelona (Spain), a kick-off meeting was organized by ICFO-OSA Student Chapter from January 26 to 28, 2007. Due to its huge success the IONS-Project already includes ten chapters from six different countries, committed to organizing bi-annual conferences and sporadic meetings.

Through OSA Student Chapters, young researchers all over the world, mostly PhD students, have the possibility to get involved with the optics community. Many chapters organize seminars, school programmes, guest lectures or even small conferences. Because of the international atmosphere at ICFO, we strongly felt the need for interaction at a higher level, where different chapters internationally could get together and create a platform for understanding and collaborative work.

Using worldwide character of OSA we suggested an international exchange and networking initiative. Such a platform provides a great opportunity for participating chapters to learn from the experiences and activities of other chapters. Furthermore, it helps young researchers to broaden their knowledge by learning about optics related research outside their usual environment and pave the way for future collaboration. Last but not least, the friendly atmosphere of these gatherings is well suited for social and cultural activities. This way, the initiative serves as a stage for personal, scientific as well as cultural exchange.

After internal consultations and preliminary planning, this idea was officially put forward at the annual OSA meeting in Rochester. Immediately, several European chapters from UK, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Ukraine and Turkey showed great interest towards the project. ICFO-OSA Student Chapter then started to organize the kick-off meeting in Barcelona late January to welcome OSA Student Chapter Southern Germany (Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany), Southampton University Chapter (Optoelectronics Research Centre, Southampton, UK) as well as Naples OSA Student Chapter (Department of Physical Sciences of University Federico II, Naples, Italy).

The meeting consisted of three parts: During the morning session of the meeting 26th, each chapter presented their chapters including their goal, structure, and activities such as optics demonstration to local schools, visits to research institute and companies, seminars of invited speakers, and sports and recreational activities.  This was followed by an open discussion regarding the chapters’ activities.  In the afternoon session the same day, we had presentations on the research activities in the participating institutes, which was followed by a poster session to discuss the details of the research activities.  Subsequently, the participants were taken to a lab tour in ICFO.  Following weekend, we took a taste of night life in Barcelona.  We also visited some touristic sites in Barcelona, such as Sagrada Familia, Parc Guell, and La Rambla.  The social activities, common meals, poster sessions and guided tours to Barcelona were organized to provide attendees with possibilities for scientific, personal and cultural exchange

The first meeting was an immense success, and paved the way for a greater cooperation among the participating, European chapters.Now, after the kick-off meeting in Barcelona, the IONS-Project is continuing. Since people from all over Europe now know each other, there will be a one day meeting for OSA Students after CLEO Europe in Munich.
Furthermore, we decided the next IONS Conference to take place in Southampton in July 2007, the scientific part being extended to three full days. This is to enable Chapters even better to get to know each other's research fields, but also to exchange ideas and experience about chapter activities and opportunities.

Even though the IONS-Project has just started it already set on fire several chapters all over Europe. We are sure that our initiative will help young researchers to get in touch and integrate within the optics community. This humble beginning is all set to blossom into a worldwide network of OSA Student Chapters in the coming future. For further information, visit ICFO-OSA Student Chapter website http://osa.icfo.es/activities.php?topic=ions or go to the official ions-project website http://www.ions-project.org.

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