News
News
Congratulations to the Redback Systems Team - Matt van Breugel, Tobias Feger, Chris Schwab, Lachlan Rogers, David Coutts, and Thomas Volz - for winning the ANZOS John Love Award for 2021!
MQ Photonics is delighted to announce that our Director, Prof Judith Dawes was elected to the Board of Directors of Optica for 2022-2024. Optica is the leading organisation for scientists, engineers, students, and others interested in the science of light!
Congratulations to Assoc Prof Alexander Fuerbach from the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Prof Stuart Jackson from the School of Engineering for being awarded a National Intelligence and Security Discovery Grant worth $569,453 over 3 years.
MQ Photonics Research Centre researchers Profs Stuart Jackson and Alex Fuerbach were awarded funding in the highly competitive National Intelligence and Security Discovery Research Scheme. Their project concerns a high brightness mid IR swept wavelength source. This is an exciting technology to enable field-deployable sensor systems to identify a variety of molecules - such as biological or chemical threats. Their vision is to develop very compact light sources that could be carried by a soldier or on a drone. This project builds on their successful collaboration over many years in developing new IR laser sources.
Congratulations to Dr Haoran Ren!
Congratulations to our Macquarie University Research Fellow, Dr Haoran Ren, for his award of an ARC DECRA fellowship! His project will combine meta-surfaces and optical fibres for fibre optic imaging with exciting photonics, biological and telecommunications applications.
MQ Photonics Summer Vacation Scholarship - Deadline Tuesday 21 September 2021
Eligible applicants must be students in the 2nd or 3rd year who are living in Sydney now.
News for the MQ Photonics Research Centre
Congratulations to Dr Mikolaj K. Schmidt, who was elected the new President of the OSA Sydney Local Section!
Over the last 2 years, Mikolaj has been co-organising our seminar series (https://www.mq.edu.au/research/research-centres-groups-and-facilities/innovative-technologies/centres/mq-photonics/news-and-events/seminars), and he has hosted over 40 seminars whether in person or online, from students, Early and Mid-Career Researchers from around the world. He will now use his experience in the new role, building stronger links for the Sydney photonics community.
Our MQ photonics seminar series will be now convened by Dr Haoran Ren, who was elected as the new Secretary of the OSA Sydney Local Section.
Nonthanan Sitpathom, PhD student, is presenting his work on opal sensors at CLEO PacRim next week (see below video link!)
Congratulations to Prof Rich Mildren and his colleagues for the breakthrough: A Diamond Laser Makes Guiding Stars
For further reading please see:
Dr Xuezong Yang's paper is out on single-frequency diamond lasers for sodium excitation. Published this week in Optics Letters and highlighted in Laser Focus World, see articles [1], [2] and [3].
Congratulations to Prof Mick Withford, Prof Simon Clark and colleagues!
Leaders, Innovators & Disruptors Networking Series:
Michael Withford, Founder and CEO joined us to present at the last Leaders, Innovators and Disruptors event for 2019. It’s not common to have the skillset to be a Distinguished Professor, innovator, inventor, co-founder and CEO all at the same time, but Michael is a rare exception.
Michael successfully translated and commercialised 15 years of research at Macquarie’s MQ Photonics Research Centre research to solve real-world problems. He talked about the challenges faced by hi-tech hardware-based start-ups and selling a product that is perceived by customers as ‘magic’.
Australian Institute of Physics Awards:
A shoutout to the winners: Hong Bao Tran Tan from UNSW (Postgraduate award) and our very own Gayathri Bharathan (Jak Kelly Scholarship) for her brilliant talk on integrated mid-IR lasers! Gayathri's talk was on "All-integrated mid-infrared laser sources."
Menzies Science Entrepreneur Fellowship for Dr Simon Gross!
Congratulation to Dr Simon Gross from Physics and Astronomy for winning one of three prestigious Menzies Science Entrepreneurs Fellowships! This program aims to help scientists translate their research into commercial outcomes.
Prism Award 2019 to Modular Photonics!
Category of Optics and Optomechanics for OMPlex
New upgrade solution for multimode fiber networks - 100X boost in data rate in less than 1 hour.
Promotion from 1 January 2019
- Stuart Jackson from Engineering promoted Level E
- Andrew Lee from Physics and Astronomy Level C
- Robert Williams from Physics and Astronomy Level B
- Annemarie Nadort from Physics and Astronomy Level B
OSA Fellows for 2019
Judith Dawes
Macquarie University, Australia
For significant innovative research contributions to lasers, rare-earth doped laser materials and biomedical laser applications, as well as substantial professional promotion of physics and optics education in Australia and beyond.
Richard Mildren
Macquarie University, Australia
For pioneering scientific and technological contributions in diamond optics and laser engineering, and associated achievements in promoting these fields in academia, industry and to the public.
They join Prof Jim Piper, Prof Brian Orr, Prof Michael Withford, Prof Deb Kane who are also Fellows of OSA.
2018 - World first optical fibre Successfully transmits over one petabit-per-second
A world-first optical fibre as fine as a human hair has been developed, which can transmit 1.2 petabit of data per second - 12 million times quicker than the fastest NBN connection.