Symposium on Undergraduate Research-Rochester, New York on October 14-18, 2012

This project is to support undergraduate students attending and participating in the Symposium on Undergraduate Research to be held at the Laser Science XXVIII Conference, October 14 - 18, 2012 in Rochester, NY. The symposium will take place on Monday of the conference. Previous years' programs are at http://www.aps.org/units/dls/meetings/symposium/index.cfm. The intellectual merit of this project is to present and disseminate the results of the research work of the participants, mostly from NSF-supported REU programs, and possibly to initiate collaborations among them. The broader impact is to provide the opportunity for these young students to attend a national meeting of this stature and give their first public talks. A secondary benefit arises because collaborations among them are often born in these sessions since very often students in different universities are involved in similar projects. A third impact is to inaugurate the networking among these students that will be so vital to their future careers as professional scientists, and to encourage them to continue along such a career path.