Just wanted to say thanks to my mentor post doc Stephen Lee for taking the time to be part of this program and help me out when I have questions. I have a lot of questions, and I know they are not exactly easy questions to answer. Sometimes when things go wrong it is a great experience for learning, and oh how things have been going wrong with some of the intruments for us haha. Even though calibrating the near-infrared InGaAs spectrometer (Indium Galium Arsenide) has been a pain, he has kept diligent and doesn’t get discouraged, because it seems there is always another light calibration method or another way to try to route the light going into the spectrometer. Hopefully the white light laser will do the trick!

I would like to say thanks for always taking the time to explain things to me. Its funny how my face will go blank when he is explaining something to me that goes over my head and he already knows he needs to back track a bit. He is busy and it seems like everyday he is working on something new I haven’t seen. I can tell everybody in the lab looks up to him and comes to him when they have questions about thier own research. Thanks Stephen I hope I am not annoying you too much lol

In the picture above you can barely make out Stephen’s figure through the laser light. He is bent over the InGaAs spectroscope trying to align a pin hole so the light enters the spectroscope in the most optimal way. Most of my pictures of him are bent over this machine trying to get good spectra out of it 🙁  I chose this picture because you can see the direction the laser travels and Stephen in the back doing….something. I’m not exactly sure why the light makes these lines but it looks cool and beautiful. I will have to ask Stephen.