1.

INTRODUCTION

Optics has always been a fascinating domain to approach, as light is a major component of human life. Thus, light and vision to begin with, then instrumentation and nowadays Photonics with so many applications hardly to present in this limited space represent fields that no scientist can miss.

The path towards an optics education and why not a career, has at least three possible starting points: Physics, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. Of course, these are not exclusive, as Biology and Medicine are also now very much into this equation, as we shall see in this presentation as well.

Fine (or precision) mechanics has been particularly dedicated to optics education & research in Romania. While in the capital city of Bucharest it started in what is now UPB – the “Politehnica” University of Bucharest, in the Western (industrialized) part of the country this developement was mirrored some years later, when this domain was opened at what is now UPT – the 〜Politehnica” University of Timisoara, in close connection with industry development, IOT (Optical Entreprise Timisoara). This started as a branch of IOR (The Romanian Optical Entreprise), the “mother” company in Bucharest.

Both industry, education and R&D in Fine Mechanics and Optics flourished until the 1989 Revolution changed conditions again. Communism fell and democracy (with the specific transition towards it) was installed; universities developed freely trying to find their place in a society that was itself rapidly (and sometimes chaotically) changing. In a few years only, the “big” centralized (state) industry fell and SMEs (Small and Medium Entreprises) took over the void left places. Technical universities had to make efforts to adapt, as until then, the engineering education and R&D activities (with their related funding) were being carried out in relationship with the “big” industry. In parallel, the number of related State Research Institutes has also decreased considerably in the 90s.

Research Grants begun in 1998 (but a National R&D Plan was issued only in 2002) to replace the old centralized system of contracts that was in place between industry, universities, and research institutes before 1989 (while some of the former Institutes’ staff was naturally “absorbed” by universities). SMEs have also grown in the meanwhile. Thus, a new, at first timid development began for the universities and for the related industry, after more than a decade of searches for a new system to fit in, this happened not only for the technical universities, but also for those which had only some departments focused on STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The EU (European Union) integration process that started in 2004 gave a boost to this process. Romania’s integration in the EU in 2007 accelerated it, although the poor use of the available EU funding was – and still is – a shortcoming that affects it seriously. So did the economic crises that, we may say, stopped the growth of both industry and universities for several years. Funding has been unusually abundant for 3-4 years (although the 1% of the National Product for Research, agreed with the EU, had not yet been reached). Then Europe entered into an economic crisis and the National Calls stopped for about 2 years. Priorities had to be set, which forced a new national Law of Education (and adjacent legislation) that lead to a much better (and long awaited) attention to be paid to competitiveness and real value. This also created premises for increased transparency in the system and set new, higher, more Western standards in promotion in both the universities and R&D sectors. Conditions were created for research grants to be awarded on true competitive grounds. The process is yet incomplete, as two obvious tendencies still manifest: the first one is to push the reform further, in all its ethical and efficiency aspects, while a second one is to go back to a system not awarding the best and prone to intervention.

In Optics, the domain has very much followed the general trend, in universities, R&D and industry. Thus, now there are several favorable conditions that are facilitating our initiative to establish a Photonics Pole in Western Romania, bringing together groups and institutions willing to participate:

To follow these strategic lines, we have proposed and are currently working on a Partnership Project (1682/2011), funded by the Romanian Authority for Scientific Research - project that has several months of implementation now. It includes five institutions (Fig. 1) focused on different domains, in a complementarity that is intended to be the basic structure of the future Photonics Pole, as we shall present in the following. The links with other national and international collaborators will also be presented, as an intensification of these interaction is an essential part of our strategy.

Figure 1.

Members of our Consortium and some of their collaborative links. Member institutions from the academia are marked with rectangles, while industrial and medical partners are marked with circles. The central part of the figure comprises the future planned Photonics Pole in Western Romania.

All these aspects raise specific issues that need to be solved, and this presentation points out some of our collaborative efforts to:

As one may remark, our approach is top-down, from the highest output, in R&D (and its requirements), to the very basic aspects of higher education. Thus, the scope of this paper is to present the challenges we are facing and some of our solutions for achieving these goals.

2.

ACADEMIC AND INDUSTRIAL PARTNERS

Our Consortium, which we make efforts to continously expand, now comprises several insitutions (Fig. 1). It has been built on an initial collaboration between three groups, located in three universities:

The industrial and medical partners of our Consortium are also pointed out in Fig. 1 (in circles), while some of our most important collaborators are also shown, in rectangles, with only some of the current collaborative links that exist between them.

3.

CURRENT PARTNERSHIP PROJECT

In Fig. 2 the general plan of the collaboration in the current project [4] is presented, with some of the tasks assigned to each institution. All of them imply both senior and young researchers. From more than 30 researchers currently involved in the project, almost half are PG and UG students – with the stress on the formers. This human resource that we try to keep balanced is enhanced by the researchers and PG students that are working occasionally on the topics approached by our collaborators (Fig. 1), so the number of people involved is actually variable every month.

Figure 2.

Scheme of the links between the Phases of our current Partnership Project [2] - with the partners involved: UAVA - Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad, UMF - Victor Babes Medicine and Pharmacy University of Timisoara, BIO – Biomedica S.A., UHA – University Emergency Hospital of the Arad County, INT – Inteliform S.R.L. Timisoara.

The training of these PGs is therefore a challenge [5], especially since they have to move occasionally from one institution to another, and there are various aspects they have to approach by working in small groups at a time. These aspects are covered normally by the coordinator of the project at each institution, but even that has in this case not proved sufficient, and therefore we have designated actually a deputy for each coordinator to be able to face the very diverse tasks that appear. For such a multidisciplinary work, one has to learn not only the scientific component, but also components related to the management of the activities – and this happens at all levels.

Although the project has started for less than a year, most of the PG and UG students involved have participated in a conference related to the topics approached – and this has been a specific part of our strategy for their development. For some of them (maily for the UGs) attending this conference has been a very early research experience, while for some of them (even for some PGs) it was the first time that they participated in an international conference (the LASER Congress in Munchen was such a conference). This prepares the ground for more complete journal papers to conclude their various directions of work – from optomechatronics to automation, medicine (endoscopy, gastroenterology) and dentistry (with various aspects, from materials studies in prosthetics to the imaging of the soft tissue of the mouth). It provides the students with a feedback on the level of their work, while also giving them the right image on what the (expected) level of the reseach is internationally. The three years time interval of the project are planned to allow for the complete development of each research theme, but we have verified in practice that a good start is a must for success.

Another most interesting aspect of PG training in our Consortium – particularly, but not only on this project - is the fact that the students (but the seniors as well) come into contact with aspects well outside their usual area of expertise. Thus, everyone has to learn and to expand his/her view to an inter-disciplinarity that may prove quite useful in their future or current carreer.

4.

R&D, TRAINING AND TEACHING RELATED TO RESEARCH AT EACH PARTNER

For our current project we approach GS-based handheld probes [45], as well as endoscopic miniature scanning heads. Another research avenue is on the optimal scanning algorithms that have to be employed in OCT (but more general, in Biomedical Imaging) to obtain the most – in terms of speed (for in vivo real-time imaging) and artifact-free images – from the OCT systems. The translation of the research-gained expertise in UG teaching has been presented in detail in [5], while a most extended discussion on the methodological aspects has been done in [46].

The AOG has pioneered en face Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) technology in 1996 and has produced the first OCT en face images from the retina, has researched and protected the generation of a combined OCT / confocal image [48], generated 3D images from retina and skin, devised multi-interferometer configurations and special modulators to collect simultaneously images from different depths in the tissue and introduced the concept of OCT imaging with adjustable depth resolution. AOG also performed theoretical studies on the performances of OCT systems. First images of eye with pathologies using en-face OCT have been reported. AOG has also developed the first instrument combining OCT with ICG fluorescence for imaging the retina in collaboration with New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and Ophthalmic Technology Inc. Combination of three technologies in one system, OCT, scanning laser ophthalmoscopy and adaptive optics and highest limit in vivo obtained in en-face images as thin as 3 μm were reported. Resources were oriented towards extending the expertise acquired from ophthalmology to cell imaging and OCT applicability to image embryos [49] and more recently, towards OCT endoscopy [45]. Expertise was extended to dentistry [47], to imaging of basal cell carcinoma and to art conservation [50]. Other current research focuses on a novel solutions to reject the effect of mirror terms in spectrometer based OCT [51], to eliminate the speckle in OCT, to perform 3D imaging using multiple paths configurations [52, 53], on coherence gated wavefront sensors [54] and on speeding up the acquisition based on graphics cards [55].

Professor Podoleanu has been involved in supervision of postdoctoral researchers constantly from 1999, with a number fluctuating, up to 5/year and of PhD students, with a number up to 8/year. He has created a new lecture course, required to be taught to students recruited by a Marie Curie Training site, HIRESOMI (2006 – 20010) he has coordinated with two other universities and three companies in Europe, supported by the EC, Biomedical Optic. This is now being taught to other PhD students in the School of Physical Sciences in the UoKent. Research inspired undergraduate projects are conducted by the AOG with students from the 3^rd year MSc (PH600) and 4^th year MPhys (PH700) in the School of Physical Sciences. They cover several aspects of applied optics, such as designing hand held probes for imaging the eye, for imaging in the mouth, for endoscopy and addressing fundamental limits in the technology, such as devising simple methods for linearisation of data before FFT [56]. An applied optics project is conducted with students from the 3^rd year Forensic Science programs on investigating the OCT as an anti-spoof tool in imaging fingerprint at security points. Other projects are conducted with students from other universities in the South East of England, supported for short summer projects by South East Physics Network (SEPNET), embracing assembly of optical configurations for OCT as well as devising customised LabView Matlab programmes for OCT interfaces. AOG is also regularly acting as host of Erasmus work placement students, sent by Universities in Brno, Lille and Porto for 3 – 10 months to develop practical skills in an optics lab. Such exchanges resulted in published results in journals [57] and several conferences.

Since 2007, research in the ODALab started focused efforts in freeform optics driven by critical needs in compact and mobile instrumentation, specifically, in the applications of AR [75-76] and biomedical research. Several national and international sponsors, collaborators and industrial partners participate in the research efforts. Support is given through grants from the National Science Foundation, the NYSTAR Foundation, the II-VI Foundation, government research labs and industry. As part of a growing interest in freeform optics [77], Prof. Rolland is currently the director of a planned NSF Center for Freeform Optics, collaboration between UoR and the University of North Carolina Charlotte.

In terms of UG students at the University of Rochester, there is a Journal of Undergraduate Research (JUR), entirely focused on publishing peer-review articles, from all domains, but only from UG students. Also, some half of the UG and most PG (Master) students are implied in research. Prof. Rolland, by example, is the Director of the Robert E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design an Engineering that was created to provide students with a computer lab, a fabrication lab, and a testing lab, that all, from UG to PG can access to develop hands on experience. Activities with the Center are integrated as part of lectures to provide a place for experiencing hands on learning. Also several classes have a lab component to give students hands-on experience with knowledge taught in the classroom.

Training of PG (Doctoral students, but also PostDocs and Master students) is an essential component of the ODALab activity, and the funding discussed previously is focused to support their activity. There are thus up to 20 young researchers at a time in Prof. Rolland’s supervision – over half are Ph.D. students.

The collaboration of the Consortium with ODALab has started in 2009, when Prof. Duma (UAVA) was a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow at The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, in Sept. 2009-June 2010. It continues on issues of scanning in OCT [35], especially for galvoscanners [44], as well as on various problems of optical engineering.

The activity in the Nanofabrication Facility is focused on the design, manufacturing and testing of Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). The collaboration of the Facility with the Consortium (Fig. 1) is focused on the manufacturing and testing of MEMS for different types of endoscopes for OCT.

In terms of teaching, the main interests of the Facility head, Prof. Ioana Voiculescu are to teach the students at UG and PG about emerging technologies. The emergence of new technologies that are revolutionizing the practice of engineering, the miniaturization of mechanical device, the advent of nanotechnology, the emergence of intelligent systems, the introduction of new and advanced materials, the development of sophisticated software and finally the revolution in biology are the base for modeling a modern curriculum in the Mechanical Engineering studies [79]. Based on these considerations the teaching is focused on the study of MEMS technology with a focus on optics applications. For the study of MEMS device a special commercial chip named Class on Chip (Class on a Chip, Inc., TX, USA) [80] is used. This chip is based on MEMS devices and provides innovative educational and research platforms for students at UG and PG level. This silicon chip has the dimensions 6.3 mm x 2.8 mm and contains 16 devices that move, allowing a wide range of experiments to be conducted. Several devices contain micromirrors (Fig. 4d). In the application from Fig. 4a-c the students learn the process to fabricate micromirrors; they can also analyze with the microscope the micromirror and the mechanical system used to actuate the micromirror. After the students are familiar with the concept of micromirror they are asked to find papers related to this topic and each student will have a short presentation of the paper selected by the student on micro-mirrors fabrication process and applications.

Figure 4.

Lab-on-a-chip [65] used for MEMS teaching at the City University of New York (CUNY), NY, USA: (a) view of the chip mounted; (b) micro-motor and gears whithin the chip; (c) comb-drivers; (d) Micromirror MEMS structure on chip for student education with microstructures for optical applications.

The applications in the industrial sector are increasing. There are several possible applications for MEMS and Nanotechnology in various fields like biotechnology (ex: biochips for detection of hazardous chemical and biological agents), medicine (MEMS pressure sensors) or communication (circuit) [81]. MEMS have a lot of advantages: small size and small scale allow to place a lot of different devices on the same system; it is also less expensive because we minimize the materials consumption used to make MEMS. With this kind of system you can transfer a small motion on nano-scale to a bigger motion on the macro-scale.

The investigation itinerary is the normal one, as biological samples are first studied in vitro, and after the calibration, in vivo. We expect that at the end of the project the OCT equipments (system & different scanning probes) will be ready to move from lab to the clinic environment. Among the research objectives targeted there are: Barrett’s esophagus and the investigation or the removal (endoscopically) of polypoid lesions. One has to stress that traditional procedures such as Ultra-magnifying Endocytoscopy, Autofluorescence Imaging, Chromoendoscopy or Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy have important advantages: they reduce unnecessary biopsies or resections, and they therefore decrease the risk of endoscopic complications. Their drawbacks (high costs, labor intensive, time consuming, and need experienced MDs) imposes OCT as a valuable tool for investigations. OCT will be used to by example to differentiate between neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions, and to increase the accuracy of the differential diagnosis, as in colon adenoma.

5.

CONCLUSIONS

The paper presents our Consortium, our main collaborators [1, 2], our current Partnership Project [4] and some of its challenges. A few aspects related to the necessary interactions between universities and industry in our Consortium (and to the role of the later) were also pointed out. These efforts are part of a longer term strategy that aims to create the structure of a future Photonics pole in Western Romania.

Issues and activities related to the training of postgraduate (PG) students and to the teaching of undergraduate (UG) students (and to the translation of the research experience for the teaching process) are pointed out – at the academic partners. This paper completes – in terms of a collaborative structure – the presentation made on these aspects in [6] for the activity of the 3OM Optomechatronics Group [3].

Future work comprises further translation of the research results and expertise into the UG and Master curricula, the enhancement of our early research experinece with UGs, and a better training of the PG, especially at Doctoral and PostDoc level, with a focus on driving them towards higher impact research - and publications - at an as-early-as-possible stage of their work.

Directions of development of the Photonics Pole structure are also envisaged, with the inclusion of other partners from the region and with the enhancement of the collaborations with our partners from Europe and USA. There is also a continuous, natural effort to attract significant funding for the development of our activities in R&D and to its applications in industry and medicine.

Figure 5.

S.C. Inteliform S.R.L. Timisoara – examples of plastic molded parts (including optical) designed and fabricated.