Hello OSSC members and friends,
Last month we had our January meeting at the Holiday Inn in Torrance with our special guest speaker Bahram Jalali, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, UCLA, who took us down a pathway of some of his wonderful research that led to products and most specifically his RF encoded fluorescence camera for cancer detection and cell biology. This was a great way to start the 2026 calendar year for the OSSC, Prof. Jalali has been a long-time friend of the OSSC as he gave a talk some years ago at UCLA.
Our Leadership Team continues to keep our society going through our main committees where the job of planning these monthly dinner meetings takes place. Also, our Website and Communications Committee keeps our website up to date, our Social Media accounts active and this newsletter brings some current information that is also linked to our website and other related websites of interest to our members and friends. Our Membership and Finance Committees keeps our members properly registered and our finances current as we seek to grow our society.
One effort we have to grow our society is to reach out to local colleges and universities, physics and engineering departments, and student clubs to make them aware of our society, meetings and events, so they might consider joining us from time to time.
In March, our meeting will be at Caltech in their Cahill building where their Astronomy department is located and we will hear from Roger Smith and Jason Fucik about the Cryoscope - A Telescope in Antarctica. I met Roger some years ago when he was working on the Zwicky Transient Facility for the Mount Palomar Observatory. Roger gave a talk to the OSSC in January 2017; his was the first video recording the OSSC ever did and it is on our webpage Videos of OSSC Speaker Presentations (you need to be an OSSC member to view these videos!!).
One component of our Education & Outreach activities is to help our members find their education and career pathways. Apprenticeships and Internships are a good way for people to enter the workforce or move to another field during their ‘upskilling’ process. Vital Link and DIAG USA are two organizations that can assist employers and prospective employees create apprenticeship and internship programs. This month we will have Suzy Angulo & Miriam Farnbauer, both from DIAG USA tell us a bit about the apprenticeship process and they will be at our February meeting at UC Irvine and will have a table top exhibit so you can talk to them during the reception, dinner and after the presentation.
The OSSC is always seeking members that wish to learn more about our society’s inner workings, as that may be a way to help your career grow in interesting directions and learn new skills in the process. If you would like to volunteer some time, please contact one of the OSSC Officers.
Hope to see you soon at an OSSC meeting.