Ryan Aguinaldo has been selected as one of two graduate students to represent UC San Diego at CASE 2014: Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering, a three-day workshop developed by AAAS in Washington, DC. He will interact with members of the United States Congress and their staff to learn about the federal budget process, policy making, and effective science advocacy and communication at the national level. 

Ryan is a senior graduate student in the Micro/Nano-Photonics Group led by Professor Shayan Mookherjea. His research on silicon photonic devices for optical networks is valuable to the Center for Integrated Access Networks, an NSF Engineering Research Center. Ryan has been President of the ECE Graduate Student Council and an officer of the student chapters of IEEE, OSA, and SPIE. The United Nations has been declared 2015 as the “International Year of Light” and Ryan will be contributing to raising awareness of optics and photonics research on Capitol Hill.

In a recent article in Nature Nanotechnology, Liu and colleagues show that an artificial metamaterial can increase the light intensity and “blink speed” of a fluorescent light-emitting dye molecule. The nanopatterned layers of silver and silicon in the new material sped up the molecule’s blink rate to 76 times faster than normal, while producing an 80-fold increase in its brightness. To read more go to: http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1471.

Unique to Thurgood Marshall College, the Marshall Mentor Program is a year-long program providing transfer students the opportunity to work closely with faculty who will share their knowledge and experience in order to better equip students for study at UCSD. Prof. Nguyen has very generously been participating in the Marshall Mentor Program this year serving as a mentor to two of their students.