Funded by an endowment from Milton and Rosalind Chang, this program provides 7 grants of USD 1,000 to enable students who present papers to travel to the Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science (FiO+LS), the annual meeting of Optica and the American Physical Society Division of Laser Science (APS/DLS). Grants are usually awarded to the presenter and/or first author of the paper.

Application Information

How To Apply

Submit a paper to FiO+LS and opt into the competition. Learn more on the conference website.

Important Dates

The submitting author must opt-in to the competition during the regular paper submission process and follow all of the instructions provided on the submission site.
Paper Submission Deadline: 01 January 0001

Applicant Requirements

• Opt-in to the competition during the regular "call for papers" submission process for FIO.
• Have an accepted paper to FiO.
• Demonstrate need for travel support.
• Be a current Optica student member.

Application Requirements

• CV/Resume (no more than three pages)
• Personal Statement (250 words or less)
• Accepted Paper and Abstract
• One letter of support from head of group leader, department of lab lead or PI

Past Recipients

2024

• José Reyes Alfaro, Universidad Politécnica de Tulancingo, Mexico
• Akanksha Sharma, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
• Sayoni Sarkar, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
• Sindhoora M, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India
• Amit Haldar, National Institute of Science Education and Research, India
• Arvind Maurya, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, India

2023

• Daniela Arellano, Yachay Tech University, Ecuador
• Vincent Forster, Instituto de Fisica, UNAM, Canada
• Suman Karan, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
• Julian Orozco Herrera, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia
• Sandeep Singh, Physical Research Laboratory, India
• Bianca Tieppo, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Brazil
• Kamila Tieppo, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, Brazil

2022

• Husain Alqattan, University of Arizona, United States
• Daisy Ludlow, Brigham Young University, United States
• Anirudh Ramesh, Northwestern University, United States
• Jackson Rodrigues, Manipal School of Life Sciences, MAHE, Manipal, India
• Ankit Sharma, IISER Bhopal, India
• Sandeep Singh, Physical Research Laboratory, India
• Huijuan Zhang, University at Buffalo, United States

2021

• Due to Covid-19 the travel grants were approved to cover the costs for 31 students registation at CLEO. 

2020

• Due to Covid-19 the travel grants were approved to cover the costs for 165 students publication fee's at CLEO. 

2019

• Scott Will, University of Rochester, United States
• Tristan A. Wilkinson, West Virginia University, United States
• Yun Zhao, Columbia University, United States
• Justin Randall Rippy, University of Houston, Baylor College of Medicine, United States
• An Pan, Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
• Jiamin Li, Tianjin University, China
• Adedayo Muideen Sanni, Wayne State University, United States
• Nils T Otterstrom, Yale University, United States
• Swagato Sarkar, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India
• Sanjaya Lohani, Tulane University, United States
• Christian Traum, University of Konstanz, Germany
• Chunyang Ma, Jilin University, China
• Clemens Herkommer, TRUMPF Scientific Lasers GmbH & Co. KG, Technische Universität München, Germany
• Jon Gorecki, University of Southhampton , UK
• Heming Wang, California Institute of Technology, US
• Phillip Merkl, University of Regensburg, Germany
• Midya Parto, University of Central Florida CREOL, US
• Moshe-Isay Cohen, Technion- Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
• Lukas Maczewsky, University of Rostock, Germany
• Jason Leshin, University of Central Florida, US 

2018

• Koen Alexander, Ghent University-imec, Belgium
• Enrico Carnemolla, Heriot-Watt University, UK
• Sadegh Faraji-Dana, California Institute of Technology, USA
• Attila Fülöp, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
• Xinwei Li, Rice University, USA
• Clemens Liewald, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Germany
• Matthew Mitchell, University of Calgary, Canada
• Francesco Saltarelli, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Zimu Zhu, Cornell University, USA
• Jelena Notaros, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
• Ankan Bag, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
• Avijit Chatterjee, Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India
• Aysan Bahari, Texas A&M University, USA 
• Hsuan-Hao Lu, Purdue University, USA  
• Jingyang Peng, RMIT University, Australia
• Liang Xu, Nanjing University, China
• Luca La Volpe, Laboratoire Kastler Brossel, France
• Milica Notaros, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
• Poolad Imany, Purdue University, USA
• Shahriar Aghaeimeibodi, University of Maryland, USA

2017

• Leonardo Del Bino, National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom
• Yijun Bo, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
• Joshua A. Burrow, University of Dayton, USA
• Xu Feng, University of Texas at Austin, United States
• Shun Fujii, Keio University, Japan
• Denis Ganin, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany
• Nicolas Bourbeau Hebert, Université Laval, Canada
• M.V Jabir, Physical Research Laboratory, India
• Chaitali Joshi, Cornell University, Columbia University, United States
• Gun-Yeal Lee, Seoul National University, South Korea
• Elhanan Maguid, Technion, Israel
• Andri Mahendra, The University of Sydney, Australia
• Christopher Pugh, Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo, Canada
• Qitian Ru, CREOL, University of Central Florida, United States
• Ezgi Sahin, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore
• Maria Solyanik, The George Washington University, USA
• Nathália B. Tomazio, University of Sao Paulo/Sao Carlos Institute of Physics, Brazil
• Jinghui Yang, University of California, Los Angeles, United States 
• Yunyi Yang, Centre for Micro-Photonics/Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
• Han Zhang, University of Texas at Arlington, USA

2016

• Mahbub Alam, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
• Surekha Barkur, Manipal University, India  
• Elad Eizner, Tel Aviv University, Israel
• Xiaobo Han, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China  
• Krzysztof Kaczmarek, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
• Aditya  Kakkar, KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Germany
• Tong Lin, National University of Singapore, Singapore
• Sara Magdi Al Menabawy, American University in Cairo, Egypt  
• Emerson Gonçalves de Melo, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil  
• Roxana Rezvani Naraghi, University of Central Florida, USA
• Michael Nielsen, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
• Christian Reimer, INRS-EMT, Canada  
• Gabriel Castillo Santiago, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico  
• Chao Shen, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia
• Patrick A. Stockton, Colorado State University, USA  
• Peng Wang, University of Utah, USA
• Yi Weng, NEC Laboratories America, Inc., University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA
• Marcelo Wu, University of Calgary, NRC - National Institute for Nanotechnology, Canada
• Hengyun Zhou, Harvard University, USA

2015

• Aadhi A., Physical Research Laboratory, India
• Milad I. Akhlaghi, University of Central Florida, United States 
• Matthew Applegate, Tufts University, United States
• Omar Calderon-Losada, Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
• Bingying Chen, Peking University, China
• Rokas Drevinskas, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
• Itai Epstein, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
• Alem Gebru, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
• Moshe G. Harats, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
• Jianguo Huang, Xian Jiaotong University , China
• Amir Khodabakhsh, Umeå University, Sweden 
• H. Esat Kondakci, University of Central Florida, United States
• Vincent Michaud-Belleau, Universite Laval, Canada
• Vishwatosh Mishra, IIT Kharagpur, India
• Gregory Moille, Thales Research & Technology, France
• Patrik Rath, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
• Litty V. Thekkekara, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
• Logan Wright, Cornell University, United States
• Haomin Yao, University of Rochester, United States

2014

• Chris Edwards, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Vala Fathipour, Northwestern University, United States
• Hojoong Jung, Yale University, USA
• Xin Li, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Mohammad Ali Miri, University of Central Florida, USA
• Bozhidar Oreshkov, Max Born Institute, Bulgaria
• Antoine Runge, University of Auckland, New Zealand
• Robert Woodward, Imperial College of London, United Kingdom
• Jingda Wu, University of Washington, USA
• Xingyu Zhang, University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Anderson Amaral, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil
• Li Chen, Ohio State University, United States
• Vala Fathipour, Northwestern University, United States
• Manuel Marques, University of Kent, United Kingdom
• Giovanni Milione, CUNY City College, United States
• Jelena Notaros, University of Colorado Boulder, United States
• Jungwook Paek, Iowa State University, United States
• Amy Shah, Vanderbilt University, United States
• Caio Bruno Wetterich, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Xiaorui Zheng, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

2013

• Boris Afinogenov, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
• Anderson Amaral, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil
• Ajanta Barh, IIT Delhi, India
• Cristian Cortes, University of Alberta, Canada
• Itai Epstein, Tel Aviv University, Israel
• Kumel Kagalwala, University of Central Florida, USA
• Ondrej Kitzler, Macquarie University, Australia
• Yufei Ma, Rice University, USA
• Francesco Monticone,The University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Himansu Pattanaik, University of Central Florida, USA
• Ralph Peterson, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA
• Hongxia Qi, Perking University, USA
• Jun Suk Rho, University of California Berkeley, USA
• Shibdas Roy, University of New South Wales, USA
• Niccolo Somaschi, University of Southampton, UK
• Sergey Svyakhovskiy, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
• Polina Vabishchevich, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
• Yuzhe Xiao, University of Rochester, USA
• Min-Seok Yoon, Hanyang University, Republic of Korea
• Nadezhda Zhdanova, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia

2012

• Jehan Akbar, University of Glasgow, UK
• Sharad Bhooplapur, University of Maryland, USA
• Francesco de Ros, DTU Fotonik, Denmark
• Ming Ding, University of Southampton, UK
• Moshen Rahmani, National University of Singapore, Singapore
• Sergey Stremoukhov, M.V. Lomonsov Moscow State University, Russia
• Xiao Sun, University of Toronto, Canada
• Sebastian Wuenstner, Imperial College London, UK
• Soroush Hossein Yadzi, University of Maryland, USA
• Wei Yu, University of Maryland, USA
• Regina Alves, University of Sao Palo, Brazil
• Emerson Barbano, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Precious Cantu,University of Utah, USA
• Suzie Dufour, Laval University, Canada
• Laszlo Gyongyosi, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
• Kumel Kagalwala, University of Central Florida, CREOL, USA
• Idelma Terra, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Terence Tsz-Wai Wong, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
• Carmen Vela Garcia, University College Dublin, Ireland
• Ye Wang, Northwestern University, USA

2011

• Lina He, Washington University, United States
• Devin Pugh-Thomas, University of Virginia, United States
• Alessandro Tuniz, University of Sydney, Australia
• Yuze (Alice) Sun, University of Michigan, United States
• Peng Sun, Ohio State University, United States
• Josue Davila-Rodriguez, University of Central Florida, United States
• Cobus Jacobs, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
• Gilad Lerman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
• Pouya Maraghechi, University of Alberta, Canada
• Bora Ung, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
• Rocío Borrego Varillas, Universidad de Salamanca, Spain
• Gillian Kyne, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland
• Juliana M.P. de Almeida, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
• Francesco Aieta, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
• Pavel Porizka, Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic
• Jeremy Moore, University of Michigan, United States
• Kevin Vora, Harvard University, United States
• Martin Lavery, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
• Anton Bykov, Moscow State University, Russia
• Anirban Mitra, University of Rochester, United States

2010

• Alvaro Casa Bedoya, Univ. of Sydney, Australia
• Martynas Beresna, Univ. of Southampton, UK
• Martin Bernier, COPL, Univ. Laval, Canada
• Thomas Buss, Technical Univ. of Denmark, Denmark
• Chieh-feng Chang, California Inst. of Technology, USA
• Josue Davila, Univ. of Central Florida, USA
• Doug French, Purdue Univ., USA
• Shima Fardad, Univ. of Central Florida, USA
• Nathan Heilmann, Brigham Young Univ., USA
• Ori Katz, Weizmann Inst. of Science, Israel
• Robert Keil, Friedrich Schiller Univ. Jena, Germany
• Pouya Maraghechi, Univ. of Alberta, Canada
• Thomas Matthews, Duke Univ., USA
• Hayden McGuinness, Univ. of Oregon, USA
• Joel Rubin, Queens College, the City Univ. of New York, USA
• Jonathas de Paula Siqueira, Univ. de São Paulo, Brazil
• Irina Soboleva, Moscow State Univ., Russia
• Christian Smith, Aarhus University in Denmark
• Amy Watkins, Univ. College Cork, Ireland
• Aram Zeytunyan, Yerevan State Univ., Armenia

2009

• Oscar Ayala, Univ. of Texas at Austin, USA
• Dean Brown, Univ. of Rochester, USA
• Jia Chen, Walter Schottky Inst., Germany
• Harold Dehez, INRS-EMT, Canada
• Moti Fridman, Weizmann Inst. of Science, Israel
• Vishal Jagtap, Paris Electrical Engineering Lab, France
• Nikolay Makarov, Montana State Univ, USA
• Euan McLeod, Princeton Univ., USA
• Shalin Mehta, Natl. Univ. of Singapore, Singapore
• Rachel Noek, Duke Univ., USA
• Vito Roppo, Polytechnic Univ of Catalonia, Spain
• Kristopher Rowland, Univ. of Adelaide, Australia
• Laura Russell, Tyndall Natl. Inst., Ireland
• Kanwarpal Singh, INRS-EMT, Canada
• Hu “Tiger” Tao, Boston Univ., USA
• Wei Wei, Peking Univ., China
• Petter Westberg, Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Sweden
• Xiaoxia Wu, Univ. of Southern California, USA
• Michelle Xu, Univ. of Toronto, Canada
• Marco Zanola, Univ. of Pavia, Italy
• Maria Antonietta Vinceti, DII - University of Brescia, Italy

2008

• Adalberto Alejo-Molina, INAOE, Mexico
• Nicole Brimhall, Brigham Young Univ., USA
• Yaron Bromberg, Weizmann Inst. of Science, Israel
• Rijuparna Chakraborty, Univ. of Calcutta, India
• Daniel Corrêa,Univ de São Paulo, Brazil
• Marcello Ferrera, INRS-EMT, Canada
• Ivan Garanovich, Australian Natl. Univ., Australia
• Qing Gu, Univ. of British Columbia, Canada
• David Haefner, Univ. of Central Florida, USA
• Alireza Hassani, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
• Robert Kester, Rice Univ., USA
• Yoav Lahini, Weizmann Inst. of Science, Israel
• Henry Liu, Princeton Univ., USA
• Yulia Mazhirina, Saratov State Univ., Russia
• Sara Núñez-Sánchez, Inst. de Óptica, Spain
• Jiahui Peng, Texas A&M Univ., USA
• Keith Serrels, Heriot Watt Univ., UK
• Kyung Soo Choi, California Inst. of Technology, USA
• Robert Wilson, Univ. of Michigan, USA
• Jackson J. Bianca, Univ. of Michigan, USA
• Jonathan Blakely, USA
• Pamela Bowlan, Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA
• Paul Hoy, University of Southampton, UK

2007

• Amit Agrawal, Univ. of Utah, USA
• Victoria Astley, Rice Univ., USA
• Shaghik Atakaramians, Univ. of Adelaide, Australia
• Dane Austin, Univ. of Oxford , UK
• Majid Badiei, Georgia Tech Univ., USA
• Corey Baron, Univ. of Alberta, Canada
• I-wei Andy Hsieh, Columbia Univ., USA
• Meredith M. Lee, Stanford Univ., USA
• Giovanni Volpe,  Inst. de Ciències Fotòniques, Spain
• Bingwei Xu, Michigan State Univ., USA
• Riccardo Castagna, Univ. Politecnica Delle Marche, Italy
• Uday Chettiar, Purdue Univ., USA
• Kevin Early, Univ. of Massachusetts, USA
• Mark Herrera, Univ. of Missouri-Rolla, USA
• Panomsak Meemon, Univ. of Central Florida, USA
• Nicole Moore, Univ. of Rochester, USA
• Ubaldo Neves, IFSC, Univ. de São Paulo, Brazil
• Dmitry Pestov, Texas A&M Univ., USA
• Mohammed Saleh, Boston Univ., USA
• Natan Shaked, Ben-Gurion Univ. of the Negev, Israel
• Giorgio Volpe, University College London, UK

2006

• Felicie Albert, École Polytechnique, France
• Alexandra Baum, Univ. of Manchester, UK
• John Adegoke, Norfolk State Univ., USA
• Pascal Dupriez, Univ. of Southampton, UK
• Mable Fok, Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong, China
• Yan Li, Univ. of New Mexico, USA
• Iva Maxwell, Harvard Univ., USA
• Wilbur Reichman, Univ. of California, Davis, USA
• Xingwei Wang, Virginia Tech Univ., USA
• Xiushan Zhu, Univ. of New Mexico, USA
• Or Peleg, Technion Univ., Israel
• Weibin Chen, Univ. of Dayton, USA
• Andrea Alù, Univ. of Pennsylvania, USA
• Guoguang Rong, Vanderbilt Univ. Nashville, USA
• Lirong Wang, Univ. of Arizona, USA
• Luigino Criante, Univ. Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
• Mark Rothmayer, Xavier Univ., USA
• Rijuparna Chakraborty, Univ. of Calcutta, India
• Tyler Ralston, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Yannick Keith Lizé, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
• Xiaogang Chen, Columbia Univ., USA

2005

• Guy Bartal, Technion, Israel Inst. of Technology, Israel
• Conner Evans, Harvard Univ., USA
• Yannick Keith Lize, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
• Avi Niv, Technion, Israel Inst. of Technology, Israel
• Lazaro Padhila, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Nakeeran Ponnampalam, Univ. of Alberta, Canada
• Tyler Ralston, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Amartya Sengupta, New Jersey Inst. of Technology, USA
• Daxin Shi, Illinois Inst. of Technology, USA
• Adam Zysk, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

2004

• David R. Lytle, II, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
• Marco Antonio Duenas Esterling, Univ. Natl. de Colombia, Colombia
• Brendan Hanna, Australian Natl. Univ., Australia
• Sonali Dasgupta, Indian Inst. of Technology at Delhi, India
• Ben Brown, Univ. of Oxford, UK
• Aziz Mahfoud Familia, Univ. of Dayton, USA
• Lazaro A. Padilha, Jr., State Univ. of Campinas, Brazil
• Cong Deng, Univ. of Dayton, USA
• Chao Li, Hong Kong Univ. of Science & Technology, China
• Yannick Keith Lize, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada
• Mihaela Balu, School of Optics/CREOL, Univ. of Central Florida, USA
• Milena D'Angelo, Univ. of Maryland at Baltimore County, USA
• Nirmalya Ghosh, Biomedical Applications Section of Center for Advanced Technology, India
• Denis G. Gusev, Moscow State Univ., Russia
• Mitsuko Igarashi, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
• Amiel Ishaaya, Weizmann Inst. of Science, Israel
• Charu Kakkar, Indian Inst. of Technology at Delhi, India
• Tzu-Ming Liu, Natl. Taiwan Univ., Taiwan
• Ryan Roth, Columbia Univ., USA
• Ilya Shadrivov, Australian Natl. Univ., Australia

Selection Committee

The recipient is selected by the FiO+LS conference and program chairs.