Photonics for a Better World

In 2015 alone, more than 1.1 million refugees streamed into Germany seeking a new life. Thousands more have arrived since then. For many, finding work is a key step in the successful integration into a new society. To help with this transition, the city of Berlin held Germany’s first refugee-only job fair in December of 2016. Berliner Glas, a company that designs and manufactures optical components, assemblies, and systems, was one of the 211 companies that met with more than 4,000 refugee job seekers during the one-day event. The attendees came from a wide variety of vocational backgrounds -- from science and technology to sales and construction. They also presented challenges not usually found among native-born German job applicants. Berliner Glas booth at job fair for refugees in Berlin "The integration of refugees into everyday work does not succeed just by pressing a button, said Dr. Regina Draheim-Krieg, head of Human Resources at Berliner Glas.” Many conditi...

Raphael Yuste discusses work in brain mapping in a new video interview with SPIE. Rafael Yuste and his research group at Columbia University are trying to image the neural circuits of the brain in hopes of gaining a better understanding of how the brain functions. However, said Yuste in a recent tour and video interview of his lab with SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics , “The methods in neuroscience have not been there yet.” Yuste is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and co-director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Circuits at Columbia. He and David Boas (director of the optics division of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School) chair the new Brain applications track at SPIE Photonics West 2017 in San Francisco, running 28 January through 2 February. Using novel optical techniques such as two-photon and nonlinear microscopy, Yuste’s lab is trying t...

Among the #FacesofPhotonics: Student Leadership Workshop participants at SPIE Optics + Photonics Guest blogger: Emily Power is a 2016 graduate in communications from Western Washington University, and most recently social media intern for SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. She blogged on responses to the SPIE #FacesofPhotonics campaign, to share the stories of SPIE students around the globe. This is the second of four posts. One of the many perquisites of being a student in the optics and photonics field is being able to pass along knowledge to those who will follow your footsteps in the future. Throughout the #FacesofPhotonics campaign, it became clear that current SPIE students thrive on educating a younger generation while simultaneously working diligently on their own academic careers. In this post, we feature students who have educated others as well as themselves. Teboho Bell Teboho Bell is from the Republic of South Africa, and is...