Third year PGR and vice-president of EUOPS (Exeter University Optics and Photonics Society) Ioannis Leontis discusses his experience of two conferences he was recently invited to:
In September 2019, as vice-president of EUOPS (Exeter University Optics and Photonics Society), I was invited to participate in two OSA (Optical Society of America) conferences in Washington DC. The first one, Leadership Conference 2019 (SLC 2019), was mainly focused on students in optics and included were workshops for improving student skills, transitioning from student to professional and choosing a profession. Moreover, there were very interesting presentations about hot topics in photonics, such as a presentation about the new Infrared Space Telescope of NASA “James Webb”. Concerning the second one, OSA Frontiers in Optics and Laser Science conference 2019 (FiO+LS 2019), it was a very interesting technical conference in optics with multiple parallel sessions about Nanophotonics and Plasmonics, Quantum Technologies, and photonics application in biology including a plenary talk of Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics. In general, both OSA conferences were of great scientific interest and it was a great opportunity for improving my scientific networking and to expand my scientific horizon in optics.