Colloquia & Guest Speakers

Testing Novel Fiber Lasers in Germany's "Lichtstadt": Impressions from a year in Jena

Andrew J. Berger

Monday, December 1, 2014
3 p.m.–4 p.m.

Goergen 101, Sloan Auditorium

Abstract:

From August 2013 to July 2104, I was on sabbatical in Jena, Germany, working with biomedical optics researchers at the Leibniz-Institut für Photonische Technologien (IPHT).  The group had recently developed a specialized fiber laser for performing coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy.   In this talk, I will describe my year of testing this laser’s suitability to perform interferometric CARS microscopy, leveraging its inherent generation of a reference beam.  Graduate students in particular might enjoy hearing about some of the paradoxes I confronted, some of the (re)-discoveries I made, and some of the ways in which the Institute of Optics played an unexpected role.  In addition, I will provide an insider’s report about the city of Jena, which is in many ways a sister city to Rochester and a place to which any Optics devotee should consider making a pilgrimage.

Bio:

Andrew Berger, Associate Professor of Optics, arrived in Rochester in July, 2000. He holds physics degrees from Yale (B.S., 1991) and MIT (Ph.D., 1998). At the latter, Dr. Berger did his doctoral work in the G.R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory under Michael Feld, developing methods of blood analysis using laser spectroscopy. Prior to coming to the Institute of Optics, he spent two years at the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Center in Irvine, CA, building handheld systems to analyze breast tissue content, thanks to a postdoctoral fellowship from the George E. Hewitt Foundation for Medical Research. Unlike his advisor Bruce Tromberg, however, Andrew escaped Southern California.