I was asked to introduce myself briefly for this first issue of 2006 as the new Associate Editor of the Asia Pacific region. To keep the introduction brief I would like to point, those of you interested in my research activities, to my university webpage (http://www.ee.cuhk.edu.hk/~hktsang). Like most academics, balancing my schedule for teaching, research, university administration and volunteer activities for professional organizations is sometimes hectic, but having found that my time as Associate Editor (AE) for Membership was not really that time consuming, I was happy to take up the challenge of serving as the new AE of Asia/Pacific. I see the main role of the regional editor as strengthening the newsletter’s international perspective by coordinating the international content from a particular LEOS region in the Newsletter. The brief for the regional AE is fairly broad and includes seeking articles on a variety of regional topics from his/her region. A non-exhaustive list of examples of regional content can include news of local awards, chapters, conferences in the region, education, membership developments, new services, student activities, technology developments and market trends. Therefore if you wish to report some local news of LEOS related activities, or perhaps propose some article for the Newsletter, please contact the AE for your region. Those of you in the Asia/Pacific region may simply send me an email at h.k.tsang@ieee.org. Increasingly, my time is spent reading and replying to emails. However sometimes lost emails (e.g. misidentified as SPAM by various email server filters) or simply email overload (on a typical day I need to scan through ~50 new non-spam emails in the morning) may mean that I can overlook an important email – so if (hopefully on the rare occasion) that I have not replied to your email within a reasonable time, please consider using alternative means of communications (e.g. my fax number is +852-26035558).
Being based in Hong Kong, I am well aware of the difficulties of trying to keep abreast with the latest LEOS activities in other parts of the vast Asia/Pacific region. We only have a small LEOS chapter in Hong Kong, so almost all the Asia/Pacific content will need to come from other parts of the Asia/Pacific region such as Japan, Korea, Australia, greater China region (including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau), New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. Although I try to attend several conferences (e.g. LEOS Annual meeting, OFC, CLEO) every year, particularly those held in Asia Pacific region (OECC, CLEO Pacific etc) I am constrained by my limited university/research grants travel budget. When I do attend conferences I am therefore always willing (in fact eager) to establish new contacts, and I encourage you to approach me if you have an idea for a potential article or can give some feedback on the LEOS newsletter content.
In this issue we have several interesting articles from the Asia/Pacific region. There are interesting articles on research activities on distributed optical sensors at the University of Tokyo and an article in the Hot Topics section on recent developments of quantum dot semiconductor amplifiers and their applications from Japan. We also have a comprehensive overview of Photonics Down Under (Australia) by Prof Rod Tucker, as well as a short introduction from the new Vice President of the Asia Pacific Region, Prof. Chennupati Jagadish from the Australian National University. The LEOS presence is not well established in many other areas of the Asia Pacific, particularly China. Hence the idea of establishing LEOS contact persons for territories, which have some other professional body but which do not have any LEOS chapter, may be useful for increasing the coverage on LEOS related activities in regions that do not have any formal LEOS organization. Please refer to the short article by Jens Buus, the VP of Europe/Middle East/Africa, in the membership section.