The prize for the Best Student Presentation for the IREAP Graduate Student Seminars for Spring 2009 was awarded to Chad Ropp for his presentation entitled "Positioning of Quantum Dots for Photonic Switching"/ Chad is a student of Dr. Edo Waks.

We are pleased to announce that the IREAP Graduate Student Seminars are back for the Fall 2009 semester. Seminars have been scheduled for Fridays at 12:00 p.m. in the Large Conference Room (1207), Energy Research Facility. Everyone is welcome. In addition, pizzas with a variety of toppings will be provided free of charge for graduate students; others will have to contribute a small fee of $5.00. Submit your requests for pizza toppings and refreshments to Peter Pan (zpan at umd.edu).

The mission of the IREAP Graduate Student Seminars is to give graduate students the opportunity to practice short presentations of their work. This is a stepping stone for preparing them for their thesis defense, PhD proposals, or even conference presentations. It is a valuable skill for all professionals, and students should be eager to present their work.

The talks will be informal with an approximate duration of 30 to 45 minutes allowing questions for about 15 minutes. There shouldn't be any stress since there is no evaluation committee coming up with grilling questions. Everyone is welcome to be the audience.

After the conclusion of each talk, graduate students in the audience will fairly rate the speaker on a scale of 1-5 for Technical Merit and on a scale of 1-5 for Presentation. The total score will be averaged and the highest scoring speaker at semester's end will receive a monetary prize for "Best Speaker." In the case of a tie, the winner shall be the speaker with the largest number of audience members providing ratings. For additional information regarding the IREAP Graduate Student Seminar Series, please contact Peter Pan (zpan at umd.edu).