SPIE is well represented at ETOP, the international conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics, in Hangzhou (China) 29-31 May.
The biennial conference, sponsored by SPIE, IEEE, OSA, and the International Commission for Optics (ICO), brings together educators from around the world to share information about the practice of teaching optics at all levels.
SPIE member Xu Liu of Zhejiang University (China) and SPIE Fellow Xi-Cheng Zhang, director of the Institute of Optics at University of Rochester (USA), are conference chairs and keynote speakers.
Oral and poster presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and exhibits will inform the expected 300 participants -- professors, students, teachers, and professional trainers -- on how to teach optics and photonics, a field that forms the core of the global technological infrastructure.
Topics at ETOP 2017 include training in curriculum development and assessment; new pedagogical methods; setting up laboratories for optics education; and specific tools and methods for teaching optics in industry and at the university level.
For example, SPIE Fellow Judith Donnelly, emeritus professor at Three Rivers Community College (USA), will give two workshops, one on "Dumpster Optics" and another on problem-based learning. The Dumpster Optics workshop involves inquiry-based activities to illustrate basic optics concepts with inexpensive, commonly found materials. The workshop, which will also be offered at SPIE Optics + Photonics 8 August, is for budget-constrained teachers who have little to no funds for formal optics kits and expensive supplies.
SPIE member Eric Mazur of Harvard University (USA) will be featured at the ETOP plenary session with Yan Wu, director of the Higher Education Evaluation Center of the Chinese Ministry of Education. Mazur will give a talk on "innovating education to educate innovators," and Yan will discuss the evaluation and assurance system of higher education in China.
Keynote talks will be given by SPIE Fellow David Hagan of University of Central Florida (USA) and SPIE member Paul Urbach of Technische University Delft (Germany), along with a representative from Hamamatsu (Japan), Jean-Paul Ngome Abiaga, a science and engineering program specialist at UNESCO, and others.
Invited speakers include SPIE Fellows Khaled Habib (Kuwait) and Mourad Zghal (Tunisia) and SPIE members Aaron Danner (Singapore) and Ahmadou Wague (Senegal).
Other participants at ETOP 2017 include SPIE CEO Eugene Arthurs; SPIE Board Member Julie Bentley (USA); SPIE Fellows Anand Asundi (Singapore), Vasudevan (Vengu) Lakshminarayanan (Canada), Chandrasekhar Roychoudhur (USA), and Joseph Shaw (USA); Imrana Ashraf Zahid of Quaid-I-Azam University (Pakistan); and Dirk Fabian, community lead at SPIE.
Proceedings of ETOP are freely available in the SPIE Digital Library.
Learn more about ETOP 2017.
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