This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 10741, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and Author and Conference Committee lists.

The Department of Physics and Optical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology has served as an educational outreach partner with the National Science Foundation sponsored engineering research center, Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (formally Smart Lighting) for the past eight years. As part of the center, we developed educational materials on smart lighting, developed and taught lighting courses and workshops for both high school teachers and college students, and produced several short educational videos with students on lighting and general optical engineering topics. In this paper we will give examples of research and technical projects that were completed with students, discuss instructional materials that were developed, and describe the content of lighting and optics related educational videos.

This is an introductory course in silicon photonics for senior and graduate students. Topics covered in this course include: basic properties of silicon waveguides; the essentials of SOI waveguide fabrication; dispersion and propagation loss in Si waveguides; analysis and design of various passive silicon devices; modeling and characterization of silicon modulators; integrated photonic circuit; and layouts for E-beam lithography. This course also includes a laboratory to enhance student’s learning. Students fabricate a thermo-optic MZI modulator in the cleanroom and then characterize its performance. We will discuss experimental work by student groups and comment on student’s learning in this class.

Dual university programs in Germany gained impact over the last decade: companies are recruting high school students as employees and take care for their further training on the job inside the company, as well as for a university education running more or less in parallel. At the bbw University Berlin a dual university program in electrical engineering with focus on train control systems was introduced in 2013 for a main railway transport company. The curriculum had to be set up according to the special needs of the train control business in tight co-operation with the target company, being aware of the restrictions this process might introduce to academic freedom. In our case, an early victim of efficiency induced suppression could have been the intended inclusion of an optics course. Further, the dual program is scheduled over only six semesters, with an academic semester being limited effectively to 2 1/2 months, and the other 2 1/2 months being dedicated to training on the job. Such a time schedule implies the risk of extreme stress for the young participants during their transition from high school to university students and high potential junior employees. The present paper is understood as a follow-up of our previous paper on optics courses at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg, where similar problems arise. We will give some insights into the development of our Dual Electrical Engineering Course with focus on the successful insertion of an optics course into the curriculum. In parallel, the problem of the ultra-fast academic and professional transition of the students is discussed. Finally, the integrating effects of the optics course in conjunction with the RF course, offering highly interdisciplinary insights and creative opportunities during the higher semesters, is analyzed.

The only two-year program to educate photonics technicians in Michigan was introduced at Baker College in 2013. Graduates are employed with photonics companies in the state, fulfilling the primary mission of the program. The program curriculum was revised for this academic year with more curriculum enhancements planned, including photonics applications in autonomous vehicles such as LIDAR, and the use of high power lasers in manufacturing. Efforts to expand the program and create a more sustainable pipeline of students are under way with continued support from the National Science Foundation. These include the introduction of photonics content in Career and Technical Education high school programs. The paper will describe the updated program curriculum, the resources available in the Optics and Photonics Lab, and the collaborative and outreach activities with high schools in the state.

Nowadays, undergraduate research is recognized as an essential component of STEM discipline enhancing students learning outcome. As a result, governmental and non-governmental agencies have been allocating a substantial amount of funding and resources to support undergraduate students through scholarships and research activities. In addition to reinforcing the traditional classroom learning experience and providing the students with hands-on experience early on in their studies, undergraduate research is one of the key motivating factors to pursue graduate education and advance careers in STEM fields. In this paper, the positive impact of mentoring and engaging undergraduate students in paid research activities, and the project outcomes including awards and recognitions received by the students are discussed.

In recent years the Mexican government has modified the educational programs to include different subjects. Analyzing the natural science books we can notice that in the different units the themes are taught in a direct way introducing in every concept the relation with the everyday life of the students. Optics themes are included in a very good way. The programs some teachers are facing now is that some of them do not have enough experience in this change so a training program has been establish to improve their skills to show them how to implement experiments about the theoretical concepts and to have a wider amount of experiment to enrich the subject.

Over the course of an academic year, middle school students engaged in an exploration of some of the mathematics used in optics through hands-on inquiry-based experiments and exercises in problem-based learning. Goals were to introduce students to optics/photonics while demonstrating the relevance of math to the "real world". The program concluded with a capstone activity in the form of an art project celebrating “Light in Our Life”. Pre- and post surveys were conducted to determine changes in attitudes towards mathematics education. The year-long program was funded through an SPIE outreach grant.

In this work, we review the main activities related to the International Day of Light (IDL) in Spain. We describe the actions of the Spanish Committee for IDL that has been created in Spain, reactivating the Spanish Committee for the International Year of Light created in 2015. The Spanish Committee of the IDL has been very active in promoting the realization of events, and providing tools for the IDL related information dissemination, as the specific related webpage for the IDL in Spain. The Spanish Committee also was the Spanish contact with the International Secretariat of the IDL. We describe the flagship IDL event in Spain that was organized in the Faculty of Physics Sciences of Universidad Complutense de Madrid on May 16th 2018. And we report on many other activities that have been developed in different places in Spain. These activities of the IDL in Spain are intended to make the society aware of the importance of the light and the light based technologies for the progress and well-being of the humankind. They have also been oriented to attract young talent to the studies of science and engineering.

During the 2015 International Year of Light, Université Laval's SPIE Student Chapter volunteered to create a fully autonomous exhibition explaining the basics of light to the public. Composed of two informative banners and four modules each displaying a live experiment related to both fundamental and technological aspects of light, the goal of the exhibit A Meeting with Light was to illustrate the importance of light-based technologies and their role in our daily lives. Following its debut on campus, the exhibit traveled to several public libraries and major events such as Photonics North, IONS Québec and career fairs. Originating from student initiative and dedicated volunteer work from the Student Chapter, the project was made financially viable through a close collaboration with SPIE, The Optical Society (OSA) and partnerships with local optics-related companies.

Now more than two years after its first exposition and since meeting over 2000 people, it is possible to evaluate the factors that contributed to the success of the exhibit and of its continued use. A Meeting with Light is a great example of an outreach project that successfully reached its goal of promoting optics and photonics to a broader audience. In doing so, it brought together local leaders from academia, industry and government. We will discuss lessons learned by the Student Chapter in developing such a project, and we will hint at how it in influenced our next major outreach project for the first International Day of Light in May 2018.

The 16th May 2018 marks the first annual International Day of Light (IDL). The steering committee of the IDL initiative encouraged grassroots activities to increase the awareness and understanding of the applications of light. One such undertaking is the program of events developed by the postgraduate students of the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton (UoS). The program focused on engaging with the public and local schools with low levels of progression to higher education. Three events were designed: an outreach masterclass, combining activities and demonstrations from well-established workshops covering light in telecommunications, manufacturing and medicine; an art competition in a local school, for students to express scientific knowledge in a creative way; and a public panel, to explore the uses of light in a multitude of disciplines and open academic research to a broader audience. This paper explains how the events built on the ORC students’ long history of outreach and the legacy of the International Year of Light. Each event is outlined in detail, explaining the objectives and the rationale behind the audience selection. The program outcomes are described, including the impact, the methods employed and the utilization of expert partners to increase the program reach (commercial media, local schools and UoS’s diversity and inclusion outreach department), and the lessons learned from the program are assessed. These experiences can be used to recycle and adapt this format for other grassroots IDL programs. This project received funding through a SPIE IDL Micro Grant.

The Photonic Games are a yearly outreach event created in 2008 to spark teenagers’ interest in light. In teams, high school students face several optics challenges designed to appeal to various abilities and interests. In the past 10 years, more than 1531 participants, 425 volunteers and 100 organizers have taken part in this unique student-organized activity. Following the 10th edition, past presidents took the time to reflect together on what they learnt from their experience and identified key elements explaining the long-lasting success of this initiative. Metrics have been defined to track the evolution of the activity’s efficiency and are presented herein.

Novel research-inspired outreach activities allow scientists and members of the public to engage in a conversation, increasing the public’s understanding and interest in scientific research. This paper reviews outreach and public engagement initiatives undertaken by researchers from the University of Southampton’s Optical Engineering and Quantum Photonics Group during a 5-year research program grant entitled Building Large Optical Quantum States. The activities have been supported by a UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council program grant and institutional, national and international professional organizations. The paper discusses activities and hand-outs that have been developed to increase the visibility and public understanding of integrated-photonics fabrication and testing facilities, including a cleanroom-based process for the design and fabrication of quantum outreach chips. More than 1,000 of these chips have been distributed to children, parents and government officials in public events and the activities have contributed towards the authors’ research group receiving the 2017 South East England Physics Network Highly Commended Award for Best Research Group. This paper also discusses the impact of these activities and lessons learned.

Quantum state tomography (QST) allows one to probe an unknown quantum state and is a ubiquitous tool in many quantum laboratories. Unfortunately it is a time consuming and complex procedure, and thus consequently is seldom demonstrated in teaching laboratories. Here we outline a simple demonstration of the essential features of QST in a manner that allows for its implementation in undergraduate laboratories. We exploit the fact that non-separability, the quintessential feature of entangled quantum states, is in fact not unique to quantum mechanics. Using this, we construct a 3D printed version of an equivalent system for QST but with bright classical light, and demonstrate all the essential features of this tool. The source code to print the elements and run the QST are all available on-line from our website. We hope that this will inspire the introduction of “practical” quantum mechanics into the teaching curriculum.

Teaching optics to small groups of students allows them to share ideas and leads to discussions, which will enable them to understand concepts better. This is a form of peer teaching/evaluation. This group dynamic favors creativity and inhibits obstacles to learning and understanding due to shyness, and other psychological factors. In addition, this paradigm allows the learner to be an active participant in the learning process rather than a passive recipient of knowledge as in the traditional lecture based teaching methodology. The project proposed here is based on both experimental and numerical approaches. Groups of students will be using simple and inexpensive equipment in a hands-on way. Additionally using numerical tools with open source environments such as the Python programming language allows one to perform numerical experiments. These two approaches are perfectly complementary; indeed the experiments favor observations and measurements and on the other hand numerical modeling favors abstraction and familiarization of mathematical formalisms of the optical phenomena. We propose a pedagogical methodology “Active Learning in Simulating Optics” (ALSO), where the active learning method is used not only for hands on experimentation while numerical modeling facilitates development of computer codes wherein students can design their own experiments. Mixing these two approaches, experimentation and simulation, is also very well adapted in working within projects for the elaboration of a new tools for teaching. This ALSO methodology will be presented along with results from workshops utilizing this technique.

Irvine Valley College was the first school in the United States to have both HeNe and Nd:YAG open-cavity laser educational kits from eLas (formerly PI miCos Campus) successfully integrated into their extensive hands-on Laser Technology program. This paper is presented from two students’ perspective, describing the students’ experiences and including comments from the professors who integrated the laser kits into the curriculum. The main benefits these laser education kits provide for both students and faculty include their specific industrial-quality design for intensive hands-on education. Students learn about laser components and the techniques required to align a laser cavity. Theses laser systems come with lesson plans and experiments that faculty may use as is, or modify to suit a particular emphasis in their curriculum. Once alignment is achieved on a repeatable basis, then many experiments can be performed successfully, such as studying laser mode structure, input current versus output power, and wavelength stability.

A college outreach engineering education program designed for high school students was implemented in a community college using the three principles of K-12 engineering education, namely, product design, science knowledge, and mindset development. The means of transforming a science question into a design driven one was illustrated using examples and projects from the fields of astronomy and bio-optics. The relevant scientific principles were presented by introducing various iterated designs in an interactive learning environment. A high school level research component using astronomy and bio-optics-related public data was also implemented to enrich the students’ exposure to numerical processing techniques accessible in Microsoft Excel. Examples including solar events driven by magnetic field topology, cosmological images generated by IllustrisTNG Project, muon flux data, Killer T-cell motion, and wound assay cell migration are used in the teaching of iterated designs. A Path Diagram assessment model based on a LISREL computation scheme with learning intent and engineering mindset as latent variables was used to gauge the effectiveness of an implementation, the results of which would be used in the subsequent semester’s implementation of the research component. The materials developed in a College Now course, where high school students take a research course at a community college, would be readily adaptable to other four-year college programs. The possible future incorporation of an introductory engineering course for high school student education, using the MIT low-cost $100 muon detector and Fermi Lab QuarkNet muon scintillation detector, is discussed.

It is not always possible to have access to commercial experimental kits in order to impart knowledge to a class or perform an outreach presentation, and this often happens because of the lack of funding in schools and universities. We aimed to create an outreach demonstration using only recyclable materials and reusing old CDs or DVDs, so that everyone can use it. In this work, we present the outreach activity "Homemade spectrometer using a CD/DVD", which won the first place in the Optics Outreach games 2017 in San Diego. This spectrometer can be built with a CD or DVD and a template that can be acquired for free by emailing the University of Exeter Optics and Photonics Society (EUOPS), or can be collected in our outreach activities. We have tested this outreach demonstration in several events during 2017 and 2018 with a very positive feedback. Teachers and students within UK, USA, Mexico and Chile have required the activity worksheet in order to replicate the demonstration at their institutions.

The SPIE Student Chapter at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) is spearheading a new outreach project to encourage science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in grades K-12. This new outreach project is referred to as the Digital Holography Demonstration (DHD). Using a table-top setup, the DHD estimates the both the amplitude and phase of the complex-optical field, and in so doing, illustrates several fundamental optics and photonics principles including diffraction, refraction, and the interference of light. These fundamental optics and photonics principles have direct ties to current technologies being developed in the medical, astronomy, and defense communities (to name a few). This paper celebrates the resourcefulness of the DHD for STEM-based outreach events and provides a parts list, cost breakdown, and brochures, so that future efforts can benefit from its design.

Microscopes play a central role in hands-on science exploration and communication. All too often, however, students do not have a good understanding of the optical principles that govern microscopy and lack access to instruments that could help them build that understanding. Here we present an open-source Do-It-Yourself (DIY) microscope kit developed by scientists and students at BioBus, a nonprofit organization for science outreach and education based in New York City (www.biobus.org). The DIY microscope uses 3D printing to make highly adaptable optical technology readily available to educators at a low cost. Its modular configuration makes it the perfect tool to teach optical design to students of all ages. At BioBus, Inc., over 230 school-age students and teachers learned basic optics and microscope building with the DIY microscope at our community and mobile laboratories.

We further present examples of how the DIY microscope was used as a platform for student-driven projects, expanding the original design to include advanced optical features such as fluorescence and infrared imaging. The images, acquired with a low cost camera, were comparable in quality to those taken using professional grade laboratory microscopes. The use of the DIY microscope is not limited to applications in physical sciences, but can also be used as an interdisciplinary teaching tool. As an example, we showed how it was configured into a functional model of the eye, to explain the physics of vision and the pathophysiology of eye disorders, such as far and short-sightedness, and age-related macular degeneration.

The mission of the Central Carolina Community College (CCCC) Laser and Photonics technology program is “Bringing dreams to light”; to achieve this mission, LASER-TEC and the CCCC SPIE Student Chapter promotes this with outreach actives to help create “photonics” awareness in the CCCC service community. CCCC partners with the LASER-TEC NSF ATE Grant, which funds many of the various activities hosted by the Laser and Photonics Technology program and the CCCC SPIE Student Chapter. Many of these activities include hands-on “photonics” workshops using a LASER-TEC Photonics K-12 Educational Kit. Workshops hosted include: the W.O.W. middle/high school Saturday workshop, the Upward Bound Math and Science four-day summer camp, the High School Photonics Science Fair, recruiting presentations to K-12 classrooms, and K-12 STEM Teacher one-day workshops. In addition, the CCCC SPIE student chapter organizes and hosts events focused on educating it’s student members about the career opportunities in the field of lasers and photonics, as well as events to further create public “photonics” awareness. These events include, Career Interview Skills panel, High School Photonics Science Fair, Electronics lab workshop, and “Tech Like a Girl” workshop. Session attendees of this presentation will learn about the outreach events CCCC has found to be successful to maintain a very active SPIE student chapter, which not only helps organize and conduct “photonics” public outreach events, but also the active SPIE student chapter helps with laser program student retention.

The Networked Quantum Information Technologies hub (NQIT) is one of the quantum hubs of the UK's agship scheme, bringing together academia, industry and government. The Optical Engineering and Quantum Pho- tonics group at the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre have developed an interactive demonstrator of a key device within NQIT to bring quantum photonics technologies to a wider audience. The system was exhibited at the 2017 UK Quantum Showcase in London to an audience of industry and government. It also featured as part of the Quantum City stand at the 2018 Cheltenham science festival, one of the UK's leading annual science events.

The objective of this work is present diverse ways to measure the impact and quality of the informal optics education activities for its improvement in content, quality and didactic techniques; including a list of recom- mendations about how to measure the impact of the outreach events, including the target audience and the staff involved. Also, for measuring the outcomes, it is added a list of techniques about how to know the best activities for each audience, understands the perception of the activity for the public and the application of quizzes based in QR technology for a quick outcome.

The Faculty of Applied Natural Sciences and Industrial engineering, which is a part of the Deggendorf Institute of Technology (DIT), transfers a broad spectrum of knowledge to the students. Edifying the interrelations, which are present between seemingly isolated fields of knowledge, is a permanent process. In order to make this practical, a telescope construction project was launched.

The Technology Campus Teisnach bundles capacities for process development, production and measurement of highprecision optics. This also includes telescope optics. This qualifies the Campus for being the base of the in-house project.

Fixed boundary conditions are e.g. 400 mm diameter of the primary mirror M1 and the objective to realize an image performance, which is equivalent to commercial telescopes. Furthermore, an unobscured tilted-mirror-system should be realized. The optical design, which was chosen as a result of an analysis of the state of the art, is based on a subset of the parameter space, which was published in 1989 by M. Brunn ^{1, 2}. The concept was later built by D. Stevick as f/12-system (with reference to the work of M. Paul, 1935) ³.

The DIT project started with a comparison of f/7-systems. They had been implemented in the optical design software Zemax. The imaging performance was compared within a field of view of 0.7 ° deg. The mechanical design includes FEM simulation of thermal effects on slightly weighted mirrors. Different tubes had been compared, including carbonfiber- reinforced-polymer (CFRP) Monocoquetubus. Another task is the realization of fast and precise tracking. The state of the development is set out.

In this manuscript a simple and easy to implement method that uses the Airy disk generated from a Fraunhofer diffraction pattern due to a circular aperture will be used to estimate the wavelength of the illuminating laser source. This estimation is based on the measurement of the Airy disk diameter, whose approximation is directly proportional to the wavelength of the light source and to the distance between the aperture and the image plane; and inversely proportional to the diameter of the aperture. Due to the characteristics and versatility of the present proposal, this is perfectly suitable to be applied in graduate or undergraduate physics laboratories or even in classrooms for educational and/or demonstrative purposes.

May 16th, 2018 was the first International Day of Light and the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon celebrated it with a project called "IDL in Monterrey: science, art and culture of light". The two main objectives of the project were: to offer guidance to basic education teachers about how to use hands-on activities related with light, optics, and photonics to teach science with low-cost materials and taking into account the application and impact of science in our daily light; and involve non-technical audience in the appreciation and learning of the sciences, technologies, and arts related to light, using artistic and scientific demonstrations and interactive activities. The project includes teacher training, science and art workshops, STEM exhibitions, theater play and talks about light and its importance in life, science, technology, art, and culture. The present work will include the outcomes of the event and the impact of the different activities carried out.

The contest “I am a professional” is an all-Russian contest that includes many competitions in various fields: from the humanitarian sciences to the technical fields (sociology, economics, psychology, IT, physics, etc.). Several fields already tried this format, but for the photonics it was the first trial.

The goal of such contest concludes in the massive involvement of undergraduate and graduate students into solution of tasks from various areas of modern photonics – from material science till light design and AR/VR systems.

Despite main part of the contest is provided by the ITMO University and its regional partners, a set of leading industry companies supported the contest. Their motivation is in direct communication with talented students – future professionals.

This challenging project poses many tasks and makes the organization committee and the team who prepares the event to solve many tasks: organize network collaboration between many universities and industry companies to prepare the content for the event, notify the potential participants, motivate them (both sides), hold the contest in the same time with many participants over the big country and check the tasks in various fields by the experts.

We present our experience in organization of such an event and discuss some features, results and perspectives.

We designed and built a do-it-yourself spectrograph assembly to demonstrate the concept of spectroscopy, an indispensable tool for exploring the cosmos. This spectrograph is designed for optical band (400-750 nm). It uses a transmission grating to disperse the light and a webcam to measure the spectrum. This spectrograph provides a resolving power (λ/δλ) of about 1000. This demonstration involves off-the-shelf materials costing less than $500, thus making it an easy to build demonstration kit for a school or public setting. The kit is well-suited for performing various science experiments and acquiring hands-on experience for students to learn the concepts such as coherence, spectral orders, resolving power, absorption and emission spectra. All of these concepts are an integral part of modern astronomical observations as well as various other fields in STEM such as biomedical engineering, chemical analysis, food and water quality, etc. This kit is portable and fully modular, making it apt for outreach purposes.

We implement laboratory activities for the construction of key concepts in quantum optics based on experimentation and discussion. These activities were realized in the Quantum Optics Laboratory at Tecnologico de Monterrey with a multidisciplinary group of undergraduate students. We focus on experiments that involve understanding the concept of a photon, such as single photon interference, correlated photons, and entangle- ment. As an indicator of acquired learning, we design a questionnaire with conceptual questions. This initiative seeks to stimulate the development of multidisciplinary projects in quantum optics taking as a starting point the understanding of basic concepts.

This UA/NASA Space Grant project centralizes the outreach efforts for College of Optical Science students using a new online hub, developed to collect, organize, and disseminate educational activities. Optical Sciences plays a role in many of the innovative technologies transforming our society, making outreach of utmost importance to attract students to the emerging field. Outreach activities at the University of Arizona’s College of Optical Sciences (OSC) help inspire these future innovators. This website provides on-demand training for students unfamiliar with leading demonstrations and inspiration for experienced instructors looking for something new. It emphasizes scientific literacy, effective scientific communication, and serves as a free and accessible resource for STEM classrooms.

The online hub offers students new to outreach an opportunity to familiarize themselves with resources before performing outreach. Although OSC offers a semester-long outreach course that provides face-to-face training, it has the burden of class time and tuition for students. The online hub is freely available, easily accessible, and self-directed by the user’s interests. Multimedia lesson plans provide instructions for effectively presenting to students and document materials required for each activity. Clear objectives are provided to guide the instruction and evaluate the students’ knowledge and interest in optics. Ongoing outreach events are utilized during the academic year to “beta-test” the website. While an online hub greatly enhances the many outreach activities already available to students within the College of Optical Sciences, an online resource has the added benefit of being an accessible resource to teachers, students, and communities around the world.