IONS-Project

Networking Platform for Students

The IONS (International OSA Network of Students)-Project, formerly IOSC International Exchange Initiative, aims at strengthening both professional and personal ties among OSA Student Chapters all over the world, as well as establishing ties between young researchers and institutes.

In 2006, several European student chapters of the Optical Society of America (OSA) decided to collaborate on their research and outreach activities. Getting to know other young scientists on a professional and personal level, getting to know international research centers and expanding their personal horizon visiting other countries were the main objectives that are driving this international effort. The ICONS Student Chapter organized the first Conference in January 2007 where 12 representatives from Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton (ORC, UK), the Munich based Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics (MPQ, Germany) and the University of Naples (Italy) participated.

The second IONS meeting was held at ORC in July 2007, followed by IONS-3 at MPQ in January 2008. During this time, the IONS-Project expanded and now includes researchers from many other countries like Russia, Turkey and the USA. IONS-4 was held in Naples in June 2008 and brought together more than 30 participants. After receiving great support from OSA in terms of advertisement and promotion of the event, IONS-5 already received applications from 45 young researchers from Europe, the Americas and Asia and is therefore setting out to becoming the most important student conference in 2009 worldwide.

Now that the IONS-Project involves so many student chapters, we created an official IONS-Project Homepage including information about all participating chapters.

Contact: Armand Niederberger