Extreme Photonics Summer School (minus the summer weather)

Today marks my first day of as a PhD student.  I’ve just signed my acceptance letter into the PhD program in Physics and I start in May (which is today!).  This is a great victory for me as I worked my way through the hoops of the application process as quick as I could.  After all, May was coming up quick.

If only that was it though.  I still need to have proof of my Master’s degree before I can register or anything.  We’ll see how it goes though.

This week is a busy one.  The university is hosting an “Extreme Photonics” summer school in the SITE building where well-known researchers in the field of nanophotonics come and provide lectures and seminars on the varying subjects.  For a reasonable registration fee, we get lunches, coffee, a banquet, lab tours, workshops, and a whole bunch of knowledge that we’d wish we had earlier.  Not too bad of a deal, eh? As educational and useful as they are, they are exhausting.  You know, there is only so much quantum physics one can take in a day before the brain begins a phase change into mush.

As always, it’s a great chance to meet other students, professors and post-docs in the field and spark some good conversation.  Coffee definitely works as a catalyst for physicists in social occasions.  Tomorrow is the banquet so I’m looking forward to that.

Since I work in a lab at the National Research Council of Canada, I gave everyone a tour of my lab and explained how I do my research.  I tried my best to make it as “cool” as possible despite not having the time to prepare a sample and actually show some interesting physics.  But a Xenon lamp and red laser helped make up for that.  Nothing says “cool” like lasers, microchips and superconducting magnets !