2018 Light Science Workshop

The IEEE Photonics Society's second Spring Workshop on Light Science at UCSB is aimed at increasing awareness of optics and photonics with speakers from both university and industry settings. 

The event will include a career fair, in which attendees will have one-on-one time with representatives of local companies as well as a poster session to display research being done at UCSB. 

Artificial Synapses made with Conjugated Polymers: A New Organic Device

The brain can perform massively parallel information processing while consuming only ~1- 100 fJ per synaptic event.  Two-terminal memristors based on filament forming metal oxides (FFMOs) or phase change memory (PCM) materials have recently been demonstrated to function as non-volatile memory that can emulate neuronal and synaptic functions. Despite recent progress in the fabrication of device arrays however, to date no architecture has been shown to operate with the projected energy efficiency while maintaining high accuracy.

Prospective Sustainability Assessment of Next-Generation Industrial Processes and Materials

The industrial sector is a major contributor to global energy and resource use, climate change, and pollutant emissions. To accelerate the much-needed transition to cleaner industrial pathways, manufacturers, investors, and policy makers need rigorous analyses of emerging technologies that encompass not only environmental, but also technical and economic performance criteria.

Growth of Photonics Research at UCSB: Beginnings – III-V’s

Beginning with the arrival of Professor Herbert Kroemer in the late 1970s, UCSB made a commitment to focus on III-V materials—semiconductor crystals which have become ubiquitous in solid-state lasers and LEDs—and devices. Professor James Merz from Bell Labs soon joined the effort with work on photonic materials and devices. With the arrival of Dean Robert Mehrabian in 1983, the commitment to materials and the College of Engineering in general grew dramatically.

Towards Hardware Cybersecurity

Electronic system security, trust and reliability has become an increasingly critical area of concern for modern society. Secure hardware systems, platforms, as well as supply chains are critical to industry and government sectors such as national defense, healthcare, transportation, and financial. Traditionally, authenticity and integrity of data has been protected with various security protocol at the software level with the underlying hardware assumed to be secure, and reliable. This assumption however is no longer true with an increasing number of attacks reported on the hardware.

A Brief Review of Research on Efficient Energy Systems at the University of Applied Sciences Landshut, Germany

While the German word “Energiewende” is not yet quite as well-known globally as the widely used “kindergarten”, it has made it into the English language as a short description for a program of energy transition towards a low-carbon sustainable energy supply based on – to a large degree – renewable energy sources as well as increased energy efficiency.

Demystifying the Nature Research Journal Editorial Processes

Ever wondered what goes on in the mind of a Nature Research Journal editor when they are interpreting referee reports and making decisions on your paper, if cover letters are really import, or how to effectively ‘appeal’? In this interactive talk, the editorial process at Nature Research Journals will be demystified, with emphasis on Nature Photonics. We will discuss what is important to say in cover letters, how to appeal (and how not to appeal), and other types of opportunities for getting published (like Reviews & Commentary, etc.).

Net Global Warming May be Caused by Something Besides Greenhouse Gas; Soot?

Florence Miskolczi stated in a series of four publications that there can be no Earth greenhouse gas warming because water vapor from the oceans will reconfigure to compensate for added anthropogenic gases.  Yet satellite radiometer data shows 0.076 ±..012°C/decade warming in the Southern Hemisphere Troposphere and .21±.0.014°C/decade in the Northern Hemisphere troposphere for the years 1979-2007 for example. This factor of 2.7 ratio exists even though NOAA CO2 data show only a 5 ppm drop (~1 %) between Burrow and the South Pole.

Zero-Carbon Cloud: Reducing the Cloud's Growing Carbon Footprint and Enabling High-Renewable Power Grids

At UCSB IEE in October 2015, I characterized the stranded power opportunity and the ideas behind ZCCloud. Now, scientific studies show ZCCloud is economically viable, enabling TCO-competitive systems with higher capability, higher throughput (utility), and zero-carbon footprint. Cloud computing is the world's fastest growing consumer of electricity and has a rapidly growing carbon-footprint.

Excitons, Entropy, and Nonequilibrium Transport in Semiconductor Nanomaterials

Structure, surface chemistry, and energetic disorder can dramatically affect excited state dynamics in low-dimensional systems. Using a combination of ultrafast laser spectroscopy, time-resolved optical microscopy, and kinetic modeling, I will show how these effects manifest in assemblies of colloidal quantum dots (QD) and lead halide perovskites, which are promising components of next-generation photovoltaic and lighting technologies.