Abstract: In this presentation, Garrett provides an overview of how two scientists from the University of Vienna stumbled upon an enabling technology, born from fundamental research in the burgeoning field of cavity optomechanics, and made a successful transition from academia to industry. The fruit of this endeavor is “Crystalline Mirror Solutons,” or CMS, a photonics start-up commercializing high-performance optics for laser-based precision measurement and manufacturing systems. Here, Garrett outlines the key elements that led to their successes, including the conception of the underlying technology, as well as the supporting infrastructure and funding organizations that ultiately assisted in bringing this idea out of the laboratory and onto the
commercial market.
Bio: Dr. Garrett D. Cole, Co-Founder of Crystalline Mirror Solutions (www.crystallinemirrors.com), obtained his PhD in Materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. Since completing his doctorate, he has held positions ranging from the first employee of a high-tech startup (Aerius Photonics LLC, now FLIR Electro-Optical Components), to a postdoctoral position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a Marie Curie Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and, prior to leaving to found CMS, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Physics at the University of Vienna. In the course of his research career, Dr. Cole has co-authored 2 book chapters and published more than 50 journal articles and conference proceedings including papers in Science, Nature, Physical Review Letters, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Leveraging his expertise in micro- and nanofabrication, tunable lasers, and cavity optomechanics, Dr. Cole developed the proprietary substrate-transfer process at the heart of Crystalline Mirror Solutions and, along with Professor Markus Aspelmeyer, co-founded the venture in February 2012.

Abstract: Success in a photonic startup company requires constant attention to the balance between risk and opportunity. These risk / opportunity decisions involve many different areas, technical, marketing, financial, organizational and psychological, among others. Some of these decisions are very specific to photonic startup issues but the balance of opportunity and risk touches on a broad range of aspects of life, of course.
This presentation discussed the general nature of risk and opportunity and from these general ideas will then derive recommendations for effective risk management methods in photonic startups. The presenter did this through examples drawn from his own experience and from the experience of others that have influenced him strongly

Bio: Dr. Daniel Renner received a Ph.D in Opto-Electronics from the University of Cambridge in England. This has been followed by 37 years of industrial experience, where he has been deeply involved with the development, manufacturing and commercialization of complex photonic devices and systems used in communication, sensor and industrial applications. His experience spans both the technical and the commercialization aspects of photonic products, having led activities in many areas, including technology and product development, identification of new business areas, introduction of new products, marketing and sales. Through this experience he has gained a respectful appreciation for the critical importance of effective business risk management.

When: Week of Monday October 23rd – Saturday Oct. 28th

PhoSoc @ UCSB is organized a week of events promoting Women in Engineering and Science.  

​We sent local scientists to give talks at schools, took light-based science activities to Girls Inc., and hosted two company tours led by the women who work there.

The following events occurred:

Contact outreach@ips.ece.ucsb.edu with questions.

I HEART ❤️ STEM
Sat. Oct. 28th, 9:30am – 3:00pm
Location: UCSB Student Resource Building, Room 1120 (map)
Women in Grades 9 – 12

Organized by UCSB's Women In Science & Engineering (WISE) group, I ❤️ STEM is a one-day conference for women in 9-12th grades. UCSB scientists & graduate students held hands-on workshops on numerous scientific disciplines, including photonics, the science of light.

Victoria Rosborough & Takako Hirokawa of the Photonics Society @ UCSB hosted a light-science workshop at the conference!

Girls Inc. Goleta
The Girls Inc. science activity is being held at the Teen Center at Girls Inc. Goleta, for girls who are already part of this group.
​This year, women scientists hosted our new hands-on science activity "Color Mixing", which teaches students about how we see color, and how we can use only three ink colors to reproduce all the colors of the rainbow.

Join us for our Summer BBQ!

Where: ESB 1001
When: Friday, June 9, 12:00PM
​Lunch will be provided

Abstract: The excitement of nanowire research is due to the unique electronic and optical properties of these nanostructures. Both axial and radial heterostructure nanowires have been proposed as nano‐building blocks for the next generation devices, which are expected to revolutionise our technological world. The unique properties stem from their large surface area‐to‐volume ratio, very high aspect ratio, and carrier and photon confinement in two dimensions. These nanowires are usually grown by the so‐called vapor‐liquid‐solid mechanism, which relies on a metal nanoparticle to catalyze and seed the growth. An alternative technique to grow the nanowires is by selective area growth technique, where a dielectric mask is first patterned on the substrate prior to growth. In this talk, I will present an overview of compound semiconductor nanowire research activities at The Australian National University. The optical and structural properties of binary and ternary III‐V nanowires including GaAs, InGaAs, InP and GaAsSb nanowires grown by metal‐ organic vapour phase epitaxy will be presented. Various issues such as tapering of the nanowires, compositional non‐uniformity along nanowires, crystal structure, carrier lifetime and polarization effect will be discussed. I will also present our results of III‐V nanowires grown on Si substrates which are of great interests for the integration of nano‐optoelectronic devices on Si platforms. Our results of enhancing the quantum efficiency of nanowires by using plasmonics are promising to improve the performance of nanowire devices. Finally, the results from our nanowire lasers, photodetectors, solar cells and photoelectrodes for water splittng will be presented.

Bio: Professor H. Hoe Tan is currently the Head of the Department of Electronic Materials Engineering at the Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University. He received his B.E. (Hons) in Electrical Engineering from the University of Melbourne in 1992, after which he worked with Osram in Malaysia as a quality assurance engineer. In 1997, he was awarded the PhD degree from the Australian National University for his dissertation on "Ion beam effects in GaAs‐AlGaAs materials and devices". He has been the past recipient of the Australian Research Council Postdoctoral, QEII and Future Fellowships. He has published/co‐published over 350 journal papers, including four book chapters. He is also a co‐inventor in 4 US patents related to laser diodes and infrared photodetectors. His research interests include epitaxial growth of lowdimensional compound semiconductors, nanostructured optoelectronic devices and ion‐ implantation processing of compound semiconductors for optoelectronic device applications. Prof. Tan is a Senior Member of the IEEE.