Nice Note From A Former Student And A Laser Optics Technology Faculty Opportunity In Western Massachusetts

This morning, I woke up to the following email from a former student (name has been removed).

 

Subject: Class of 1987 STCC Laser Electro Optic graduate

 

My name is ABCD TUVWXYZ Many moons ago you were my advisor and one of my professors in the Laser Electro Optic Technology program at STCC. I've been reminiscing recently and you popped in my head. I wanted to drop a quick e-mail to say thank you, I'm happily retired after having a rewarding career as a field engineer for 33 years. I ended up installing and repairing dozens of devices that used lasers. One used a laser to look for leaks after open heart surgery. Another  used a spectrometer in a blood analyzer.

Once again, thank you.

 

Pretty cool! It's remarkable how certain students stay with us - I can picture this one as clearly as if they were in my classroom just months ago. These lasting connections make me reflect on what draws people to this profession:

• The joy of witness - There's nothing quite like seeing that moment when understanding dawns in a student's eyes or hearing years later about their successes.
• Passion shared is passion multiplied - Great educators often fall in love with theor discipline twice - first with their subject, then with the art of sharing it.
• The cycle of inspiration - Many of us teach because we remember those who lit the spark in us, and we yearn to pass that flame forward.
• The privilege of mentorship - Building relationships with students and guiding their growth creates bonds that often last a lifetime.
• Legacy through learning - By helping shape curious, capable minds, educators help build the foundation for society's future.

And….. Springfield Technical Community College is seeking a full-time professor to lead that same Laser Optics Technology (Photonics) program. This role offers the opportunity to shape curriculum, mentor tomorrow's professionals, and advance the field of photonics, technology and engineering education. Ready to transform your expertise into academic excellence and guide the next generation of technologists, scientists and engineers? Here’s a link to the position posting.

SUNY Poly Utica Computer Chip Commercialization Center (Quad-C)

Yesterday before a meeting at SUNY Poly Utica I had the chance to go on a tour of the almost completed Computer Chip Commercialization Center (Quad-C) building located on campus. Here's a few specs on the facility:

• 253,000 sq. ft. including 56,000 sq. ft. of Class 100 and Class 1000 capable cleanroom space.
• Will host phase one public-private partnerships highlighted by a consortium spearheaded by SUNY Poly CNSE that includes leading technology companies such as Advanced Nanotechnology Solutions Incorporated (ANS), SEMATECH, Atotech and CNSE partners, including IBM, Lam Research and Tokyo Electron. 
• Annual operating budget to exceed $500 million
• Projected to result in the creation of 1,500 high-tech jobs, groundbreaking academic programs, and cutting-edge workforce training opportunities.
• The cleanrooms are stacked - not something you see much of outside of highly populated places like Singapore.

Here's a few pics I took on the tour.

Shot of the new building between Library and Admin Buildings

Flexible space - could be used for cubicles, walled offices, etc or configured as cleanroom extension

Above each cleanroom air handlers, sprinkler system etc. These systems can be maintained, upgraded etc with contaminating cleanroom

One of the huge cleanrooms and yes those little specs are people doing a final cleaning

Workers adding the CNSE sign to the building

Those 1,500 new jobs will have an average annual salary of $91,000, and an estimated annual payroll of more than $136 million once full-scale production is achieved. I am a strong believer in public-private partnerships and the SUNY Poly CNSE effort is one of the most successful I've had the opportunity to see.

LED Light Bulbs That Repel Bugs

Most of us are familiar with those ultraviolet bug zappers. They're not as popular as they once were but I do still see (and hear) them around on hot summer nights here in New England. 

They operate on a basic principal - bugs (mosquitos, etc) are attracted to light in the ultraviolet and visible blue/green wavelengths. Once the bugs get inside they get electrocuted by making contact with high voltage wires surrounding the light source. Most of us have probably questioned the effectiveness, wondering if more bugs are being attracted than zapped.

A group of researchers at the University of Southern California Dornsife led by Professor Travis Longcore came up with the great idea of flipping things around. In a paper published by The Royal Society last week titled Tuning the white light spectrum of light emitting diode lamps to reduce attraction of nocturnal arthropods Longore and his group describe how to make LED bulbs that significantly reduce the amount of blue/green light and effectively repel insects. 

By mixing the right wavelengths, light can be made to still look white to humans while minimizing those attracting blue/green wavelengths, Longcore's group found that by doing this, approximately 20 percent fewer insects were attracted. Pretty cool stuff.

Longcore's group is doing additional testing and Longore is hoping they can further target specific wavelengths to repel even more of those pesky (and sometimes disease carrying) bugs away.

Pushing Optics Closer to the CPU

There's something very important I forgot to tell you! Don't cross the streams… It would be bad… Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.

—Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) on crossing proton streams, Ghostbusters

Well.... as we learned later in the movie, crossing streams is not always a bad thing.... As part of my work with the National Center for Optics and Photonics Education (OP-TEC: www.op-tec.org) I've been spending a lot of time learning new technical content while still staying current in the computing and communications field. I've been reading (and tweeting) recently about pushing optics closer and closer to the processor in computing systems. Here's more.

Last week, IBM announced the integration of a silicon photonic chip on the same package as a CPU. Why is this important? A couple of reasons -  if on-chip and chip-to-chip communications can use silicon as an optical medium, processing will be significantly faster, consume much less power and produce much less heat than the copper wires used today.

Extreme Tech published a nice diagram (below and based on the IBM announcement) last week showing the current state of silicon photonics technology. Notice the optical connection is currently at the board edge. With this IBM breakthrough, designers will begin to start moving the silicon photonics array closer and closer to the CPU, eventually building the optics into the CPU package itself.

The technology will initially be limited to the world of supercomputing but it will only be a matter of time before we see it trickle down to consumer level devices like PC's, tablets and smartphones. 

I love it when streams converge.

ICT Center Video: The Index of Refraction and Snell's Law

A few years ago, former ICT Center Co-Principal Investigator Jim Downing received a project grant from the National Science Foundation to create a series of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) hands-on videos. John Reynolds our ICT Center New Media Designer is in the process of converting these videos and posting them on our ICT Center YouTube Channel. Here's the first 8 minute and 37 second video explaining Snell's Law and demonstrating how to measure the index of refraction of a material using some simple optical equipment.

Watch this blog and our ICT Center YouTube Channel for more from this video series.

A Conversation with David Hata - The Godfather of SAME-TEC

Earlier this month I wrote about how the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies
(NCTT, focusing on information and communications technologies) collaborated with sister NSF Advanced Technology Education Centers of Excellence Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center (MATEC, focusing on semi-conductor, automated manufacturing and electronics) and OP-TEC (focusing on optics and photonics) to sponsor the SAME-TEC 2008 Conference in Austin, Texas.

SAME-TEC has a long history, starting in 1994 with the vision of David Hata at Portland Community College and continuing to grow and evolve under the leadership and direction of Mike Lesiecki and his team at MATEC. This year the conference had over 350 attendees.

At the conference we did a number of video interviews and John Reynolds, our multimedia specialist, has been hard at work editing them. We've now got another one posted - an interview with David Hata - the Godfather of SAME-TEC. David discusses the original grant he wrote to the National Science Foundation to launch SAME-TEC and the evolution of the conference.



We have several interviews from SAME-TEC posted and you can get them different ways:

YouTube: Watch our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/NatCtrTelecomTech

Streaming and Downloading: View streaming videos and download content using your web browser at: http://nctt.org/podcast

iTunes:
If you have iTunes installed you can watch and listen to this one, watch and listen to others, and subscribe to our video and audio podcasts by following this link.

We're planning and looking forward to next years conference. Watch here, our center websites and SAME-TEC.ORG for 2009 Conference information and updates.

A Conversation With OP-TEC NSF Center Director Dan Hull

The OP-TEC Advanced Technological Education Center was launched in August 2006 with funding from the National Science Foundation. Under the direction of Dan Hull, the Center engages a consortium of two-year colleges, high schools, universities, national laboratories, industry partners, and professional societies. The participating entities have committed to join forces in creating a secondary-to-postsecondary “pipeline” of highly qualified and strongly motivated students and empowering community colleges to meet the urgent need for technicians in optics and photonics.

OP-TEC serves two types of one- and two-year postsecondary programs:

1. Those devoted to lasers, optics, and photonics technology; and
2. Those devoted to technologies that are enabled by optics and photonics.

OP-TEC is building support through curriculum, instructional materials, assessment, faculty development, recruiting, and support for institutional reform. OP-TEC will serve as a national clearinghouse for teaching materials; encourage more schools and colleges to offer programs, courses, and career information; and help high school teachers and community and technical college faculty members develop programs and labs to teach technical content.

The project has four goals:

1. Serve as a national resource center for optics and photonics education and training.
2. Create, assemble, align, and distribute coordinated curriculum materials designed to support optics, laser, and photonics education in high schools, two-year colleges, and retraining of adult workers.
3. Support established and new photonics education programs in high schools, community and technical colleges, universities, and professional societies.
4. Provide education and training for administrators, counselors, high school teachers, and community college faculty members to prepare them to:

• design new photonics technology programs that meet their local needs;
• infuse photonics into programs in photonics-enabled technologies; and
• teach optics, photonics, and lasers using curriculum materials distributed by OP-TEC.
  

OP-TEC is establishing a national infrastructure for developing and supporting widely disseminated educational programs in cutting-edge, high-demand technologies that require photonics. That infrastructure encompasses both the secondary and postsecondary levels and will involve collaboration between educators and industry personnel.

Dan and his team are doing excellent work. In July I had the chance to interview him (on his birthday!) at the SAME-TEC 2008 Conference in Austin, TX.



You can get more information on the OP-TEC National Center located in Waco, TX here.

*****
This is one of many interviews we did at SAME-TEC 2008 and you can watch them different ways:

YouTube: Watch our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/NatCtrTelecomTech

Streaming and Downloading: View streaming videos and download content using your web browser at: http://nctt.org/podcast

iTunes:
If you have iTunes installed you can watch and listen to this one, watch and listen to others, and subscribe to our video and audio podcasts by following this link.

We're planning and looking forward to the SAME-TEC conference next year. Watch this blog and SAME-TEC.ORG for 2009 Conference information and updates.

A Conversation with MATEC Executive Director Mike Lesiecki

I'm still picking apart John McCain's technology policy and will have my summary posted before the end of this long weekend.

Earlier this month I wrote about how the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT, focusing on information and communications technologies) collaborated with sister NSF Advanced Technology Education Centers of Excellence Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center (MATEC, focusing on semi-conductor, automated manufacturing and electronics) and OP-TEC (focusing on optics and photonics) to sponsor the SAME-TEC 2008 Conference in Austin, Texas.

SAME-TEC has a long history, starting in 1994 with the vision of David Hata at Portland Community College and continuing to grow and evolve under the leadership and direction of Mike Lesiecki and his team at MATEC. This year the conference had over 350 attendees.

At the conference we did a number of video interviews and John Reynolds, our multimedia specialist, has been hard at work editing them. We've now got the first one posted - an interview with Mike.



There will be many more posted and you can get them different ways:

YouTube: Watch our YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/NatCtrTelecomTech

Streaming and Downloading: View streaming videos and download content using your web browser at: http://nctt.org/podcast

iTunes: If you have iTunes installed you can watch and listen to this one, watch and listen to others, and subscribe to our video and audio podcasts by following this link.

We're planning and looking forward to next years conference. Watch here, our center websites and SAME-TEC.ORG for 2009 Conference information and updates.

A Great 2008 Summer Conference

Last week, doing something a little different than we’ve done in the past, the National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT, focusing on information and communications technologies) collaborated with sister NSF Advanced Technology Education Centers of Excellence Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center (MATEC, focusing on semi-conductor, automated manufacturing and electronics) and OP-TEC (focusing on optics and photonics) to sponsor the SAME-TEC conference in Austin, Texas. Additional sponsors included Austin Community College, AT&T, Intel, National Instruments, MATEC Networks, the National Science Foundation, the Southwest Center for Microsystems Education (SCME), SEMI, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the Texas Business & Education Coalition (TBEC), Texas Instruments, and the Texas State Technical Colleges (TSTC).

SAME-TEC has a long history, starting in 1994 with the vision of David Hata at Portland Community College and continuing to grow and evolve under the leadership and direction of Mike Lesiecki and his team at MATEC.

Last year, while attending SAME-TEC 2007, Dan Hull proposed our three centers collaborate in the 2008 conference and we jumped at the opportunity. The results were greater than I certainly expected. Last week each center focused on it’s own high tech pieces and over 350 attendees had the opportunity to “mix it up” and go to sessions in other disciplines. As the SAME-TEC website notes ~ faculty connected with each other to share practices, knowledge, and new approaches to help students succeed. Industry members connected with educators to ultimately help ensure students emerge into the workforce with the knowledge and skills desired by themselves and employers. Exhibitors connected with existing and potential clients to help determine current and future needs.

Mike’s leadership, Dan’s experience and the work of each center’s team really pulled the conference together nicely. I feel incredibly fortunate to work with such talented and dedicated people.

Of course we had a few hiccups along the way and will learn from them. Next year will be even better – we’ll do it again in collaboration with a number of additional NSF Centers. Watch www.nctt.org, www.matec.org and www.op-tec.org for details.

ICT, Semiconductors, Photonics and The Bats of Austin

On July 28-31 we'll be holding our annual National Center for Telecommunications Technologies (NCTT) summer Information and Communications Technology (ICT) conference in Austin, TX. Our National Science Foundation sponsored conference will run as it always has, with lots of great technical ICT sessions and the opportunity for faculty, staff and industry people to connect, learn from each other and have some fun. We are currently formatting the agenda, but here is teaser describing a few of this year's ICT sessions:

ICT Education: International Collaboration

The CNIT department of City College of San Francisco has been approached by several sister educational institutions in foreign countries (Brazil, France and the Netherlands) to establish collaborations at the level of students and faculty. One project has been implemented, while the others are still at the planning stage. The presentation will draw lessons from these pilots and show how these exchanges can bring benefits to both parties.

Ethical Hacking: Hijacking GMail Accounts

Gmail and other online services require a login, but how secure is it? Students will perform two attacks against Gmail--stealing authentication cookies with Hamster, and stealing passwords with a man-in-the-middle attack.

Computer Forensics Advanced Technology Education

View the crime and review the evidence. Connect the pieces.

It's All Fun and Games...And Then Students Learn

This engaging presentation will demonstrate games for learning from simple games for teaching topics like algebra to first-person games teaching algebra and other topics. Games and simulations for teaching math, science and other STEM disciplines will be explored.

Our conferences have always offered opportunities to participate in and learn about leading efforts to advance ICT technical training in the US - this summer it will be even better. In addition, NCTT attendees will have the opportunity to connect and attend technical sessions with two of our sister National Science Foundation centers - MATEC Networks and OPTEC. Here's more info on these Centers:

MATEC Networks, another National Science Foundation Resource Center like NCTT, is focused on the advancement of semiconductor, automated manufacturing, and electronics education.

OP-TEC (The National Center for Optics and Photonics Education) is a National Science Foundation Center that is building a secondary-to-post-secondary “pipeline” of highly qualified and strongly motivated students and empowering community colleges to meet the urgent need for technicians in optics and photonics.

We'll also have a little time to see Austin in the evenings and will definitely get downtown to see the 1 million (or so) bats come out from under the Congress Bridge at sundown:



We're almost full so - if you want to go - you will have to move fast - register here. Join us in Austin if you can!