Upcoming events here at UCF: Research Week, Ultrafast Molecules, and Optics Day

Friday, April 4th
1:00-4:00pm
Optics Day 2014 CREOL
One of the world's leading institutions for research and education in optics and photonics is right here at UCF – CREOL. On Friday, April 4th, CREOL (The College of Optics and Photonics) is opening its doors for a fun-filled day of lab tours, optic demos, exciting talks, and prizes. Ever seen a real-life hologram? Or the individual LCD pixels on your iPhone? Optics Day is guaranteed to be a fascinating, interactive, and educational experience! There will be tours every hour of the world's best laboratories, engaging talks every hour explaining unique phenomenon, and optics demos spread all over the CREOL lobby to stun your senses. Don't miss out, RSVP at asincore@knights.ucf.edu to reserve your spot!
Visit http://caos.creol.ucf.edu/News.aspx to learn more!



4:30-6:00pm
Ultrafast Molecular Sciences PHYSICAL SCIENCES (PS) 161
Prof. Albert Stolow - University of Ottawa, Canada

The quantum-molecular view of nature led, over the past century, to revolutionary developments in science and engineering, including spectroscopy, lasers, and molecular biology/genetics. A cornerstone of this has been the development of microscopic structure-function relationships. Nature, however, is seldom static. Therefore, in the 21st century, there is a need to develop a microscopic but dynamic, rather than static, quantum-molecular view of Nature and its processes. Unfortunately, we do not yet have “dynamics-function” relationships. Nevertheless, this quantum dynamical view will be required for many emerging areas of molecular science and technology including chemical reaction dynamics, attosecond science, photoactive materials, quantum control, molecular machines, biomedical imaging etc. In the general case, molecular dynamics involves the ultrafast rearrangements of both electronic charge and vibrational energy, termed non-adiabatic dynamics. For example, Chemistry, the breaking and making of chemical bonds, necessarily involves the coupled ‘dance’ of valence electronic charge and atomic motions. Ultrafast laser science has led to significant progress in molecular dynamics studies, particularly for the difficult but most general case of non-adiabatic dynamics. We employ photoelectron spectroscopy because it is a uniquely powerful probe technique which combines elements of both scattering theory and spectroscopy. Furthermore, new methods in non-perturbative laser quantum control have emerged as important tools for enhancing molecular dynamics studies, permitting direct measurements within the Molecular Frame which avoid the usual loss of information due to lab frame orientational averaging. As laser fields get stronger, a sub-cycle (attosecond) physics emerges, leading to new probes of driven multi-electron dynamics in polyatomic molecules. Ultrafast laser science in condensed phases also offers new opportunities in biophysics. We ‘trigger’ the unzipping of double helix DNA, potentially leading to ‘light-induced genomics’, and simplified approaches to label-free microscopy of live cells and tissues, leading to the first commercially available CARS microscope. We anticipate that the dynamical view will lead to important advances in molecular sciences and its manifold of applications.

http://www.olympusamerica.com/seg_section/product.asp?product=1068&p=349&sub=17&c=8

Chemical GIF Collection

FamiLAB Open House Recap

A few of us went to FamiLAB, the hackerspace in Longwood and our main collaborators for pretty much everything, but mainly opening a biospace come summer!

They have an open house on the first Tuesday of every month, so we went earlier this week - there were a lot of people of all ages and backgrounds, some DJs trying their hand at some surprisingly good mixes, and a grillmaster outside with burgers.

Grab a name tag made of painter's tape, high-five some people, and start talking about who you are, what you want to do, and marvel at the fact that UCF students can become members for only $20 a month. This means you too can have a "space" where you can use tools and receive instruction on anything you want to build and access it any time of day.

Our group is planning to host a class to teach the community to transform green fluorescent protein (GFP) into bacteria and / or yeast as our first project. If you have any cool ideas for biohacking classes, let us know!

Check out FamiLAB's open house!

Passing the word along about UCF Research Computing Day

You are invited to attend a half-day seminar focused on research computing to be held Tuesday, February 11, from 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., in room 233 of the Partnership III Building in the Central Florida Research Park.  The event will encompass multiple aspects of advanced computing systems and high-performance networks and how they are changing the face of research, at UCF and around the world.

A leading innovator in cloud computing and former colleague of mine, Dr. Daniel A. Reed, Vice President for Research and Economic Development and University Chair in Computational Science and Bioinformatics and Professor of Computer Science,  Electrical and Computer engineering and Medicine at the University of Iowa, has accepted my invitation to present at this event.  Dr. Reed has served as Microsoft's Corporate Vice President for Technology Policy and Extreme Computing, where he helped shape Microsoft's long-term vision for technology innovations in cloud computing and the company's associated policy engagement with governments and institutions around the world.  We worked together at UNC Chapel Hill, where he was Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute and the Chancellor's Senior Advisor for Strategy and Innovation.

The seminar will also feature UCF professors Dr. Scott Hagen from Civil Engineering and Dr. Florencio Eloy Hernandez from Chemistry as well as Dr. Erik Deumens, Director for Research Computing in Information Technology at the University of Florida, David Pokorney, Chief Technical Officer of Florida LambdaRail, Dr. Penny Beile, Associate Director of Information Services and Scholarly Communications at the UCF Library, and Craig Finch, Post-Doctoral Research Associate at UCF's Institute for Simulation and Training.

Attendees will be given an overview of research computing at UCF, including a tour of the STOKES High Performance Computer Data Center and updates on Florida LambdaRail (FLR) and the Sunshine State Education and Research Computing Alliance (SSERCA).  This event should be of high interest to our research faculty and students. For an agenda and more information visit http://www.ist.ucf.edu/researchcomputingday.html .  There is no charge to attend however, you are asked to RSVP to Marybeth Thompson at Thompson@ist.ucf.edu, as space is limited.