This study provides a comprehensive and up-to-date portrait of the skills desired by the Canadian photonics industry. To accomplish this, we investigate Canadian job postings on popular employment websites in the fields of optics and photonics to characterize clusters of skills in high demand. We supplement this investigation with an analysis of responses to a questionnaire distributed to over 300 companies with Canadian operations. We present the resulting information in a manner to support evidence-based policy decisions, such as recommendations for improvements to educational programs to better meet the training needs conveyed by the Canadian photonics industry.
At the end of 2017, Universite Laval's SPIE Student Chapter set out to imagine a large-scale outreach initiative that would be artistic in its form, while being educational in its mission. With UNESCO's First International Day of Light (IDL) acting as a catalyst, The Optical Terrace (La Terrasse Optique, in French) came to life. The first edition of The Optical Terrace was a standalone platform made of three separate 8-ft wooden cubic structures where people could learn about light phenomena through interactive experiments. This project originated from dedicated volunteer work of a multidisciplinary group of students in physics and architecture. Project funding was made possible through financial support from professional societies (SPIE and OSA) and through partnerships with local optics and photonics companies.
In this paper, we present The Optical Terrace as an original example of a large-scale outreach project, educational for both children and adults. It is a student initiative with a long-term high impact potential which, however, does not require continual in-person involvement. By installing the structure in popular and touristic locations within the city, this out-of-the-box initiative is a creative means for teaching the general public about the importance of optics and photonics. Based on the success and lessons learned from the first edition, a new and improved design was designed and built in time for IDL 2019.
3D imaging of solid targets using plenoptic cameras has been extensively explored and optimized over the years. Unfortunately, these imaging techniques, typically making use of triangulation methods and contrast recognition for depth estimation, lose their validity when imaging translucent media. For these cases, tomographic reconstruction has been shown to be a promising avenue for recovering the 3D shape of a translucent volume. Apart from the tomographic reconstruction algorithm itself, the accuracy of a reconstructed solution depends on the set of measured projections and on the system matrix. A proper determination of the system matrix is key as its elements describe the weighted contribution of a voxel in object space to one in image space; however, computing the matrix elements can consist of an arduous task as it requires a priori knowledge of the imaging system and precise modeling of the physical properties of the acquisition process. In this work, we present how an optical design software can be used to generate such system matrices. Compared with approximation methods involving paraxial ray tracing, the proposed method offers the main advantage of real ray tracing, in which the computed weighted contributions intrinsically account for optical aberrations in the imaging system. Physical properties of light propagation within the translucent medium can also be taken into account when using non-sequential modes. Using a ray tracing software thus offers great flexibility in designing plenoptic imaging systems used with 3D tomographic reconstruction techniques.
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.
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