Women in Optics - Asia
Lunch on Wednesday, 2 July 2008, 12.30 - 1.30pm
Invited Speaker
Dr Rachel Won
Dr Rachel Won
Associate Editor
Nature Photonics
Rachel is an associate editor of Nature Photonics and is based in Tokyo. She joined the journal from Aston University’s Business Partnership Unit in Birmingham, UK, where she worked as a research commercialisation consultant identifying potential research output for intellectual property applications and commercialising photonics research. She obtained her PhD degree in microwave photonics and nonlinear optics as a member of Aston’s Photonics Research Group. Prior to that, Rachel worked for the R&D Department of Philips Optical Storage in Singapore as an Optics Engineer. She holds a Master’s degree majoring in optical fibre sensing from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and a Bachelor’s degree from the National University of Malaysia.
Abstract of Talk - "Communicating photonics with the public"
Having been exposed to the environment of journalism where she worked as a student reporter during school days, Rachel has always been excited about news communications. However, she faced a dilemma – science or journalism – when it came to the time to choose a major in furthering her study. With a stronger interest in physics and mathematics, science was, naturally, her choice. Fortunately, after completing her PhD study in the world of science, she had the opportunity to combine her background in photonics and her enthusiasm in news communications working as an editor for Nature Photonics – an international journal launched in January 2007 by Nature Publishing Group. Nature Photonics is a Nature title that publishes top-quality, peer-reviewed research in all areas of optics – light generation, detection and manipulation. In this talk, Rachel will review her different roles in the world of optics starting from the early stage as a research student through to becoming an optics engineer and a research commercialisation consultant, and how the exposure to those different environments helped her in her current position as an editor. In particular, she will share her experience on bridging the gap between university and industry, and science publishing and editing. A brief introduction to Nature Photonics will also be presented.
