This project is to support undergraduate students attending and participating in the Symposium on Undergraduate Research to be held at the Laser Science XXVIII Conference, October 14 - 18, 2012 in Rochester, NY. The symposium will take place on Monday of the conference. Previous years' programs are at www.aps.org/units/dls/meetings/symposium/index.cfm. The intellectual merit of this project is to present and disseminate the results of the research work of the participants, mostly from NSF-supported REU programs, and possibly to initiate collaborations among them.
The broader impact is to provide the opportunity for these young students to attend a national meeting of this stature and give their first public talks. A secondary benefit arises because collaborations among them are often born in these sessions since very often students in different universities are involved in similar projects. A third impact is to inaugurate the networking among these students that will be so vital to their future careers as professional scientists, and to encourage them to continue along such a career path.
The twelfth annual DLS Symposium on Undergraduate Research at LS-XXVIII took place in Rochester, NY on Monday, 17 October, 2012. The Symposium has grown from ten presentations in 2001 to forty-eight (more than any other year) this year on projects done at more than 30 universities or research institutes in the US and Europe. These Symposia have brought nearly 400 students to our annual meeting to present what are often the first research papers of their budding careers. Programs, articles, and photos from past symposia are at the DLS website www.aps.org/units/dls/meetings/symposium/ and the Stony Brook Laser Teaching Center website at http://laser.physics.sunysb.edu/research-symposium/ The Symposium events began at noon with a box lunch for its participants and honored guests, who included several of the speakers at the Plenary-Prize session earlier in the morning. The students heard inspiring remarks and lively discussion from several distinguished guests, including Joe Eberly, Anthony Johnson, Jan Hall, Mike Noel, Paul Corkum, David Williams, and others. These honored guests offered inspiring words of advice to the young participants. The oral presentation sessions began at 3:00 and lasted until after 6:00. The first one, with six talks, was presided by Prof. Sean Bentley of Adelphi Univ, and the second one, also with six talks, was presided by Prof. Mike Noel of Bryn Mawr College. Besides students and mentors, the audience included quite a few regular conference attendees over the course of the afternoon. (These attendees may have learned about the session from the programs included in their registration package, or from announcements at the plenary session.) The quality of the talks was uniformly very high, and the two oral sessions were an unqualified success. It was gratifying that these very young scientists could give their first presentations at a professional meeting, and it was clearly a memorable event for them. In fact, alumni of past symposia often attend to help the current group participants in many ways, thereby forming additional bonds of friendship and collegiality. Forty percent of this year's presenters were female, a fraction well above the national average among undergraduate physics students. Many of the students remained at the meeting one or more extra days to hear talks or visit exhibits. Some were thrilled to meet famous and/or highly visible scientists, including the authors of some of their textbooks. Judging from the enthusiastic notes that accompanied their final expense reports, the student participants will surely remember this opportunity throughout their professional lives. Some of the comments were: "I was still amazed at the number of people who had come to present and exchange ideas about new research. I met some eminent scientists who stopped by my poster, … Science is in part the exchange of ideas and at this Rochester conference, [I] participated in this exchange." "These conferences are rare opportunities to interact closely with like-minded students from schools that I would have otherwise not been in contact with. This is especially beneficial for students from smaller schools, such as myself. There are, on average, about 8 or 9 students in the upper level courses and most of them are working in subfields that vary wildly from mine so this time is was nice to speak with other optics research undergrads." "What I feel I walked away with, professionally, was a greater sense of what continuing education (grad school) would be like. It was great to network with the professors from schools that I would probably not get a chance to visit." "I just wanted to let you know that giving a talk at the conference was the best experience of my academic career. It was absolutely amazing. I not only gained some confidence as a scientist, but also made a whole boatload of connections for grad school. I can't even put into words how valuable this experience was to me. I just wanted to express my appreciation to you for all you did to get me there. I hope you know that your efforts provided an opportunity for me, as well as the other students, to really launch ourselves into careers as scientists. I can't thank you enough." "I feel this was a very worthwhile experience in helping me determine my future in addition to the conference."
