News From Student Sections

OSA - New Focus/Bookham Student Award

Announcing the application deadline for the 2006 New Focus/Bookham Student Awards

Deadline for nominations: February 17, 2006

The OSA - New Focus/Bookham Student Award was established in 1997 to encourage research excellence, presentation prowess, and leadership in the optics community among OSA Student Members. In 2006, the program will hold its oral competition at the CLEO/QELS in May in Long Beach , California . Seven finalists will be selected from the first round of applications. The finalists will be judged on their reference letters and presentation skills. Six of the seven finalists will receive a $1,500 cash prize each and the top finalist will receive $5,000. Students do not need to be CLEO/QELS authors to be considered.

To nominate a student, make sure you and the student meet all the criteria listed below. Then, draft a nomination packet to send to OSA before February 17, 2006. The nomination may be mailed to the OSA Awards Office or emailed to awards@osa.org with the documents attached as Word file(s).

Criteria for Eligibility

• All of the following criteria must be met:
• You must be a current OSA member to nominate a student for this award.
• The person you nominate must be a current OSA Student Member
• The nomination package (see details below) must be received by OSA no later than February 17, 2006.
• The reference letters (requested of finalists only) are due April 28, 2006. You only need to secure the agreement of the references by February 17, 2006; they do not submit the letters in the first round of review.

Nomination Package

If you would like one or more of your students to be considered for the OSA New Focus Award, you must submit the following material to OSA by February 17, 2006:

• A cover sheet including full contact information for the nominee, two prospective references, and yourself.
• A letter from you describing how the student meets the three award criteria: research excellence, presentation prowess, and leadership in the optics community. (For leadership, please stress leadership skills or experience outside technical leadership in conducting research.)
• A letter from the student describing his/her research activities, leadership capabilities and experience, and academic background.
• The student's curriculum vitae, including employment details (employer, position, supervisor, dates), publications, honors, and awards.

A technical presentation suitable for oral presentation in the New Focus/Bookham Student Award session at CLEO/QELS 2006 in Long Beach, CA. The paper may be a presentation submitted to CLEO or QELS 2006 if the student is first author, or may be a non-CLEO/QELS paper on a topic of interest to the broader OSA membership. Finalists must be present at CLEO/QELS 2006.

• If the paper (with the student as first author) was accepted to CLEO/QELS, it will be regularly scheduled for oral or poster presentation at CLEO/QELS and will be presented a second time the special New Focus/Bookham Student Award Forum. A copy of the paper should be submitted with the nomination packet with the paper number assigned by the conference.
• If the paper was not submitted to CLEO/QELS (or not accepted), it will not be part of the conference program or digest. The paper should include: title, authors, 35-word abstract, and 200-500 word summary with no more than 3 figures or tables. Two copies of the entire paper should be included in the nomination packet if mailed. Files may be sent as attachments to awards@osa.org.

Additional Information
The OSA-New Focus/Bookham Student Awards Committee will review all nomination packages and select seven finalists by early April. If a student you have nominated is among these finalists, you will be asked to request that the supporting letters from the two other references noted in the original application be sent to OSA. They should be mailed to OSA directly and received by April 28, 2006.

Judging & Oral Presentation
The finalists will present their paper at a special forum at CLEO/QELS 2006 in Long Beach, CA during the week of May 21 - 26, 2006. The day and time of the session will be announced later.

The finalists will each have 15 minutes (12 minutes for presentation and 3 minutes for a discussion period) for their oral presentation. Presenters are provided with an overhead/viewgraph projector, data projector, screen, microphone and pointer.