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Short Courses

In conjunction with the Conference there will be 3 Short Courses. They will be held on the 8th of December, as follows:

Synopses of the Short Courses are given below.

These courses will be held in the campus of Nanyang Technological University (NTU), located in Jurong at the western end of the island and about 1 hour by bus from the Conference venue. To maximize the benefits of these short courses, they will be open to all university and high-school students as well as delegates in the conference. The delegates intending to attend the short courses will have to pre-register and pay a token door fee (free for student delegates, S$20 and $25 for members and non-members) at the Lecture Theatres to cover the cost of notes and tea-breaks.

In conjunction with the short courses we will also organize tours of the laboratories and the beautiful campus for the delegates, as well as visits to Fusionopolis, a recently open futuristic hub for IT and digital media R&D in Singapore. Coach transport will be provided between the Conference venue, the NTU campus, and Fusionopolis. The transport service fee will be S$10/pax for each round trip.

3-5 PM
Short Course on Physics of Semiconductor Lasers

Instructor: Weng W CHOW
Sandia National Laboratories, USA

This short course will highlight the insight gained from theoretical studies on the physics governing semiconductor-laser behavior. The discussion will start with a systematic and consistent quantum mechanical of a semiconductor laser medium. A hope is that by describing semiconductor lasers from the combined viewpoint of condensed matter theory and laser physics, one achieves for physicists and engineers, common ground for discussing underlying physical mechanisms. In addition to concepts and theories, applications will be presented, using examples ranging from VCSELs to wide-bandgap and quantum-dot lasers.
A rough outline is as follows:

  1. Gain from an electron-hole plasma ( Free-carrier and many-body effects, and collisions and dephasing)
  2. Laser models (Lateral mode effects, Dynamical behaviors)
  3. Quantum optics and semiconductor lasers(Quantum coherences: LWI, EIT and slow light)

10-12 AM and 1-3PM
Short Course on Optical Communication Systems and WDM

Instructor: Gerd KEISER
National Taiwan University of Science & Technology, Taiwan

The course covers the functions and operational characteristics of available optical fibers, transceivers, and specialized passive and active components needed for designing modern optical fiber communication links. It explains the distortion effects that dispersion and nonlinear processes have on signals, defines electrical and optical signal-to-noise ratios, and identifies measurement equipment and procedures used to verify system operating characteristics. The course also defines wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) concepts, components and applications. The topics include characteristics of wavelength multiplexers, reconfigurable optical add/drop elements (ROADMs), optical amplifier uses in WDM links, and implementation of WDM-based metro and FTTP networks.

1-3 PM
Short Course on Advance Optical Imaging Techniques for Biomedical Applications

Instructor: Nanguang CHEN
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Optical imaging methods have been widely used in medical diagnoses and basic biological research. A lot of new techniques have been developed for better visualization of biological processes. Among them optical coherence tomography, focal modulation microscopy, and diffuse optical tomography have demonstrated great potentials and will find numerous applications. Optical coherence tomography has evolved from the time-domain implementation to the spectral domain in the past decade. It uses low coherence light to achieve high axial resolution together with high sensitivity. It superior penetration depth is desirable for in-vivo imaging of small animal models as well as human organs. OCT for retina and anterior segment imaging has become an indispensible tool for ophthalmologists. Endoscopic OCT for imaging of human hollow organs has attracted considerable interests among researchers around the world. The basic principles of OCT will be explained and its biomedical applications will be discussed. Focal modulation microscopy is a novel imaging method developed recently. It uses coherent light to achieve selective excitation in the focal volume without resorting to nonlinear optical processes. The achievable penetration depth is comparable with OCT. However, it is compatible with fluorescence and capable of providing molecular images. The key ideas behind FMM will be introduced and its performance will be demonstrated with imaging results acquired from animal tissue samples. Diffuse optical tomography can achieve a penetration depth of a few centimeters with a compromised spatial resolution. The potential applications of DOT include breast cancer detection and brain imaging. Different Implementations of DOT instruments will be examined and compared. Image reconstruction algorithms and the related challenges will be briefly discussed.