Annual
Women in Physics Lecture
New
optical fibres for applications beyond data
transmission
Professor Tanya Monro
University of Adelaide
8:00 pm, Tuesday, 9
October 2007
Physics Lecture Theatre 1
Sandy Bay Campus, University of Tasmania
ABSTRACT:
New classes of optical fibres are rapidly emerging that
allow fibres to be used well beyond their established role in data
transmission and into applications in a various areas including sensing,
biology, medicine, defence and optical data processing. These developments
have been enabled by research in a diverse range of
fields including physics, materials science, process engineering and fluid
mechanics. Professor Tanya Monro will review recent progress in application
of the novel optical fibres. Some highlights will include fibres with
world-record nonlinearity and the first fluorescence-based in-fibre
biosensors.
SPEAKER PROFILE:
Professor Tanya Monro completed her
undergraduate degree (BSc (Hons)) and PhD within the School of Physics at
the University of Sydney. Her PhD work on self-written waveguides was
awarded the 1998 Bragg Gold Medal for the best PhD thesis by a student from
an Australian University. She then took up a postdoctoral research position
at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of
Southampton in the UK. In 2000, Tanya was awarded a Royal Society University
Research Fellowship at the ORC, where she worked until the end of 2004
leading research in the areas of holey optical fibres and soft glasses. A
year later Tanya returned to Australia to take up the inaugural DSTO Centre
of Expertise in Photonics (CoEP) Chair of Photonics and directorship within
the School of Chemistry & Physics at the University of Adelaide. In two
years she has built the centre into a team of 20 researchers. She has
published more than 200 papers and is a member of the SA Premier's Science
and Research. In 2006 she was awarded the
Cosmos Magazine inaugural "Bright Sparks" award. 'Optoelectronics
is an exciting field to work in. Many of the new and fundamental
concepts you work on can be realized and tested within a university
environment, and then tailored for real world applications' says Professor
Monro.
The Australian Institute of Physics International
Women in Physics Lecture Series was instituted to celebrate the contribution
of women to advances in physics. Under
this scheme, a woman who has made a significant contribution in a field of
physics will give a series of lectures around Australia,
including a Public Lecture arranged by each participating branch of the AIP. The Lecture will be of interest to a non-specialist
physics audience and is expected to increase awareness among students and
their families of the possibilities offered by continuing to study physics.
Further information is available from Dr. John
Humble, ph. (03) 6226 2396 e-mail: John.Humble@utas.edu.au or Dr Elizabeth Chelkowska, ph. (03) 6226 2725,
e-mail: Elizabeth.Chelkowska@utas.edu.au.
The School of Mathematics and Physics is co-organising the lecture.
ALL WELCOME