The Stanford Photonics Research Center held a symposium at the James H. Clark Center from September 16–18 with the goal of sparking collaborative and innovative conversations surrounding photonics, the study of applying light’s generation, detection, and manipulation.
On Monday, Sept. 16, the event focused on life sciences, specifically environmental and quantum sensing. The day’s three sessions opened with a keynote speech by William E. Moerner, the 2014 Nobel laureate for chemistry, who explained his research on the applications of single molecules and light in the study of bioscience.
The first session started with Professor Daniel Palanker, who is in the process of developing prosthetic vision for patients with retinal degeneration. The second session included findings from electrical engineering Ph.D. student Cassandra Huff, who is working on enhancing the monitoring of methane emissions with optical sensors. Finally, the last session opened with physics Ph.D. student Igor Teper who is studying quantum sensors.
Ph.D. candidate and event organizer Luke Qi’s favorite part of the Symposium was “interacting with other people within this community, like students, speakers, and professors, is part of what we need to do, as well as bringing in sponsors. It’s cool to see different sides of photonics.”
Physics Ph.D. student and organizer Gabriel Moreau shared his love for the photonics community. “It’s always nice to hear how we all work with similar tools but people can still create completely different stuff,” he said.
Attendees flocked to the event for their shared love of photonics and an interest in listening to others’ unique applications of it.
“Someone builds a laser harp, other people like to control cold atoms, I like to make sensors. It’s cool to see how everyone is motivated by different things. I like to think this community gives us the opportunity to interact with everyone in a different way outside the work setting,” Qi said.
On advice for the future generation of photonics researchers, “The main thing is to hang on to curiosity, and to follow the path of learning and discovering new things. It’s really fun going from a physics class to doing something nobody has ever done before and finding answers to contribute to human knowledge,” Moreau said.
“It’s important to spread the word because not everyone knows that it’s possible to restore sight with prosthetic vision, which is working so well it’s becoming real. I think it’s a remarkable point; it took us 20 years to get to this point,” Palanker said.
For Palanker, part of the strength of the community in his opinion lies in the amount of resources and people working with him. “At Stanford, we are blessed with a lot of talent from different fields. We have a strong neuroscience community, and the medical school being on campus is a lot of help.”
Palanker gave advice to aspiring photonic scientists. “To work in the interface of physics and medicine, you need to know physics and engineering well, and have a good knowledge of neuroscience. It gives you tools to know how to interact, relate, and understand how technology is connected to cells. Ask yourself what you can do to improve it,” he said.
In his keynote speech, Moerner shared that the most interesting and challenging point of his career was having good mentors that have helped him understand in general what drives him to do his research, and understanding the trial-and-error process of photonics. “The core of my career has been wanting to understand, wanting to figure out how it works. We push that every single day. There have been big barriers like we wanted to use light and lasers to detect something that depended upon the number of molecules we were sensing in a special way, we kept using the wrong samples that were not stable enough, so I decided to make a new sample using crystal instead of polymer. This is an example that led to the single molecule achievement,” he said.
Moerner’s favorite part of speaking and attending events similar to this one are the questions from the audience. “Their inputs are very stimulating because they give me ideas and collaboration opportunities, like seeing if there’s an interesting way to combine courses.” In these meetings, new knowledge is always being learned.
Moerner advised young scientists to remember the central goal of their studies. “You are not just punching things into the computer. What you’re trying to do is understand how something works,” he said., “We, in our modern age, don’t have enough people focusing on how something works. I want to encourage everyone to encourage others to think about how things work, don’t just accept it completely and never think about it again. We need people to understand in order to make new things.”
Moerner also emphasized the importance of prioritizing one’s true passions. “Don’t pursue your life as if you’re going to get a Nobel Prize the next day because, if you do that, you will most likely be unsatisfied or unhappy. Find something about science or whatever you’re doing that you get excited about every day—whether you get a Nobel Prize or not. What really matters is if you’re happy. There’s so much more to life,” he said.
