Dearest XLAB,
I am delighted to learn that the youth science programs in Göttingen are still going strong 25 years since its founding and 19 years since I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the international summer program at XLAB under steady and thoughtful leadership of Dr. Eva Maria Neher and Dr. Michael Ferber. The extent of resources and hands on experimentation XLAB offers to science newcomers, as well as the international research community students get embraced into, is awe inspiring. I came to Göttingen in the summer between high school and college and the experience stayed with me for years to come. The optimization techniques I learnt were an asset in my undergraduate computer science courses. The wind tunnel we visited in the physics of flying course is still the only one I was privy to entering. Most importantly, experiments in laser physics and hands-on experience in scanning electron microscopy provided me with invaluable preparation for my subsequent research projects at other places of excellence. This included undergraduate internships in optics with a future Nobel Laureate at the Austrian Academy of Science and with an Oxford University professor later became Provost of Imperial College, as well as doctoral studies in quantum nanophotonics at Stanford University where I continued to interact with prominent scientists of our era. The second harmonic generation experiment I set up on a table in Göttingen in 2005 was the effect I pursued in nanodevices in my first two years at Stanford half a decade later. XLAB experience gave me confidence and preparation to explore these areas successfully.
Marina is Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA, 2018-present.