October 28, 2005
Liquid Crystals in Optics & Photonics Conference Review
By Conference Co-Chair Dr. Ivan Smalyukh

Kent State University recently hosted the “Liquid Crystals in Optics & Photonics“ conference, October 27-28, 2005. The Conference was chaired by Phil Bos, Ivan Smalyukh, and Deng-ke Yang (all KSU) and organized by the Great Lakes Regional Chapter of The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) and the Liquid Crystal Institute.

The main goal of the conference was to enable the researchers working at the forefront of optics, engineering, and materials science to discuss the current state and to explore promising future optic and photonic applications of liquid crystals. The two-day meeting took the form of a summit, bringing together prominent scientists as well as students and postdoctoral fellows. It was held in conjunction with the Fall 2005 Meeting of the Great Lakes SPIE Regional Chapter (evening of October 27), Exhibition (October 27), Career Workshop (October 26-28), and Outreach Day (October 26), see web site http://dept.kent.edu/spie/glsrch/index.html for detailed information about these events. A special program for students included presentations on CV writing and job searching skills; awards for the best student presentations in both oral and poster categories have been awarded. The research topics discussed the most intensively were non-mechanical beam steering devices, tunable photonic crystals, flexible displays, and switching elements in optical telecommunication networks. There was a great deal of interest in the liquid crystals composed of or doped with nano-sized particles which are of important for emerging new applications. The scientific sessions, held in the Liquid Crystal Institute’s Samsung Auditorium, showcased the achievements in the liquid crystal research. There were two plenary lectures given by Prof. P. Poulin (Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal - CNRS, Bordeaux, France) and Prof. S. Wu (CREOL, University of Central Florida), 10 Invited lectures, and the rest where oral contributed talks. A poster session took place on the third floor of the Liquid Crystal Institute. One student Poster Presentation was awarded the “Outstanding Poster Presentation Award” (Kwang-Un Jeong, University of Akron) and two oral presentations were awarded the “Outstanding Oral Presentation Award” (Mingxia Gu and Fenghua Li, both Kent State University).

Ten companies took part in the Industrial Exhibition (see web site http://lcoptics.lci.kent.edu/ for details). The industrial support was very important for the success of the conference. Thanks to generous donations of ChemImage Corp., AlphaMicron Inc., B&B Microscopes, Ltd. & Instec, Inc., the coffee breaks & lunches were served for conference participants even though there was no conference fee.

For more information visit http://lcoptics.lci.kent.edu