ANALYSIS AND OPINION DIVERSITY IN PHOTONICS
Analysis and opinion section sponsored by
Variety is the spice of innovation
Matthew Dale discovers a new podcast featuring scientists who have overcome adversity in their careers
Y
ou find yourself thousands of miles from home at a networking
event, surrounded by strangers, feeling alienated. Networking can be a daunting task at the best of times, especially if you feel like you don’t fit in. But what the shared experiences of those telling their stories as part of an Optical Society (OSA) podcast on diversity
8 Electro Optics July 2021
show is that you ultimately get better science when people from diverse backgrounds come together. In the OSA podcast on
diversity, part of the new ‘We Are OSA’ series, photonics scientists and engineers shared their experiences working in science, and the difficulties they have faced.
‘It happened to me and I can
remember almost shedding tears… there was a huge mountain to be crossed,’ said Timothy Imogore, a Nigerian doctoral student in ultrafast optics at the Institute of Applied Physics in Jena, Germany. His research focuses on developing novel fibre Bragg grating design and inscription processes, using femtosecond laser pulses for advanced dispersion control. ‘I’d introduce myself to new
people saying, “Hi, how are you, my name is Timothy, I come from Nigeria”, to build a rapport with these people so that I could perhaps seek help, for example for a future group study,’ he continued. ‘While they would sound excited about our meeting at the time, I’d often find that the next day it was as if I’d never met them. So I had to do this over and over again.’ Síle Nic Chormaic, on
the other hand – an Irish professor who studies the interaction of light in confined geometries with matter at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan – has multiple times found herself the only woman in a room filled with
men. ‘In my first year I went to a society annual dinner where the only other woman there was the local beauty queen handing awards to the men on the stage!’ she said. Nic Chormaic’s work covers optical nanofibre mediated interactions with cold atoms, optical trapping using tweezers and plasmonic surfaces, and whispering gallery resonators. She is also a team member of Homeward Bound – a global leadership initiative aimed at increasing the influence of women in decision-making that shapes the planet. Dr Klaus Jäger, an Austrian senior scientist and deputy department head performing optical simulations for solar cells at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, was faced with the same situation when he met someone new: ‘When it came to discussing private life, almost everybody would talk about
“It’s important to show how varied photonics is, and that this… can make research more successful”
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